Connecting to data sources
You may want to include data from a variety of different sources, each of which has its own methods of connecting. We'll look at a couple of types of data sources in this section.
On-premises data gateway
Since Power BI lives as both a desktop tool and an online SaaS that provides the hosting of reports and dashboards, it is important to connect to non-online-hosted data sources as well. This is accomplished with the on-premises data gateway (referred to as the data gateway). The data gateway is a free download from the Microsoft Download Center that works with the online Power BI service to enable this connectivity on local resources from the cloud.
It is important to understand how the on-premises data gateway is different from other gateway software that may have been used in the past. The data gateway software runs on a local Windows computer, and it needs to have an internet connection to connect to an intermediary Azure Service Bus. This...
