Which should I choose?
Now that you have learned about the three different ways to connect to your data, you are left wondering which option is best for you. It's fair to say that the choice you make will really depend on the requirements of each individual project you have.
To summarize, some of the considerations that were mentioned in this chapter are listed in the following table:
| Consideration | Import Data | DirectQuery | Live connection |
| Best performance | Yes | No | Yes |
| Best design experience | Yes | No | No |
| Best for keeping data up to date | No | Yes | Yes |
| Data source availability | Yes | No | No |
| Most scalable | No | Yes | Yes |
Some of the items you'll consider may be more important than others. So, to make this more personal, try using the Data Connectivity - Decision Matrix file that is included with this book. In this file, you can rank (from 1 to 10) the importance of each of these considerations to help you choose which option is best for you.
Since the Import Data option presents the...
