Enterprise Deployment Strategies: Hub-and-Spoke & Thin Reports

One of the greatest architectural shifts in enterprise BI is transitioning away from self-contained .pbix files (where every file contains its own copy of data and visuals) to a Hub-and-Spoke "Thin Report" Architecture.

1. The Monolithic Anti-Pattern vs. Hub-and-Spoke Architecture

2. Step-by-Step Thin Report Creation

1. 1
   Develop, optimize, and validate your data model in Power BI Desktop.
2. 2
   Publish it to a central workspace: Enterprise_Sales_Model.pbix.
3. 3
   Open a brand new, blank Power BI Desktop file.
4. 4
   Click Get Data $\to$ Power BI semantic models.
5. 5
   Select Enterprise_Sales_Model.
6. 6
   Notice the bottom-right status bar: "Connected live to the Power BI semantic model: Enterprise_Sales_Model".
7. 7
   The Power Query and Model views are disabled; you focus 100% on visual design and user experience!
8. 8
   The resulting file is only ~200 KB, uploads in seconds, and cannot corrupt the underlying database!