Earlier this week, Microsoft made large model support for Power BI Premium generally available, allowing dataset caches to contain up to 400GB of models. Then, yesterday, the tech giant unveiled the December update for On-premises data gateway, introducing an Azure Cosmos DB Connector, among other changes.
Today, Microsoft has announced new Admin APIs for Power BI, alongside a .NET SDK and Service Principal authentication. The latest additions will allow admins to create custom-made solutions based upon metadata and lineage of tenant's assets.
Service Principal authentication for scanner Admin APIs will enable Azure AD applications to access Power BI APIs, without the need for admins to maintain a service account with an admin role. Only approval through tenant settings configurations will need to be granted to allow this action to be performed. You can learn more about enabling the capability by checking out its documentation here.
Previously, running a full scan of assets, data source metadata, and lineage would require multiple APIs. This task can now be accomplished through unified Async APIs, which - as the name indicates - have been implemented in an asynchronous manner. They are also noted to be highly efficient on the server side. Support for incremental scan has also been introduced, allowing customers to scan only those workspaces which have been modified since the most recent scan. Notably, incremental scan will only work for modifications from up to the last 30 days, and not for any changes made before the feature rolls out today.
Finally, the new APIs will also be returning more associated data, including endorsement labels and sensitivity labels. The former will make it easier to analyze endorsed content, while the latter could be utilized to create reports which help scrutinize data protection capabilities. Interested users can check out the source for a walkthrough on scanning using the new Admin APIs, as well as for resources that will help them get started.
