Power BI now defaults to ADBC driver for Databricks connections

The Databricks connector for Power BI now uses the Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC) driver by default for new connections. Reaching general availability (GA), ADBC provides a modern, columnar API standard based on Apache Arrow to transfer analytical data much more efficiently.

Use cases

Imagine your Power BI reports need to pull substantial volumes of data from a SQL Warehouse. The ADBC driver optimizes this transfer by bypassing the row-based translation bottlenecks inherent to the legacy ODBC driver.

You can use it to:

• Ingest analytical tables natively using columnar Apache Arrow format.
• Upgrade existing dashboards from ODBC to the modern ADBC implementation.
• Connect directly to Lakehouse//RT warehouses (Beta) via the REST-based Statement Execution API.

How to use

New connections created through the user interface use ADBC automatically. To switch existing reports that were built with ODBC, update the query in the Power Query Advanced Editor.

let
    Source = DatabricksMultiCloud.Catalogs(
        "meu_workspace.cloud.databricks.net",
        "/sql/1.0/warehouses/meu_sql_warehouse_id",
        [Catalog=null, Database=null, EnableAutomaticProxyDiscovery=null, Implementation="2.0"]
    ),
    powerbi_Database = Source{[Name="meu_catalogo",Kind="Database"]}[Data],
    default_Schema = powerbi_Database{[Name="meu_schema",Kind="Schema"]}[Data],
    dashboard_data_Table = default_Schema{[Name="minha_tabela",Kind="Table"]}[Data]
in
    dashboard_data_Table

What happens in this code:

1. DatabricksMultiCloud.Catalogs targets your workspace hostname and SQL Warehouse HTTP path.
2. Setting Implementation="2.0" tells Power BI to execute requests via the ADBC driver instead of the legacy driver.
3. The navigation steps drill down into the target catalog, schema, and table to load data.

If you need to connect to a Lakehouse//RT warehouse, include Protocol="rest" in the options record.

Limitations and requirements

• Minimum versions: requires Power BI Desktop 2.145.1105.0 or higher. Connecting to Lakehouse//RT requires version 2.156.951.0 or higher.
• Single driver constraint: you cannot mix drivers inside the same semantic model. Every Databricks connection within a single model must be set to either ADBC or ODBC.
• Existing connections: pre-existing reports remain on ODBC until manually updated to Implementation="2.0".
• Power BI Service with Lakehouse//RT: direct connections in the Power BI service do not work because the service tests connections over ODBC; you must route through an on-premises data gateway and select Skip test connection.