Is Microsoft going to support Azure Data Lake Analytics as a source for Power BI Desktop?
It would be very profitable if we could query our ADLS data through Azure Data Lake Analytics from Power BI instead of paying for continuously running SQL DW.
The only information I've found is this ticket, where it was suggested to use Power BI Web source and ADLA REST API. But I think it will be unacceptable to ask our business users to write U-SQL reqests within Power BI Desktop. Any other options?
Power BI Desktop only supports Azure Data Lake, v1 and 2, but not Azure Data Lake Analytics directly. As mentioned in your question the one work around is to use the API with U-SQL. The only other approach is to output your transformed data into ADL in a user friendly format, or output it into a Data Warehouse schema, then load it into Azure Analysis Service/Power BI.
From the current Microsoft 'Modern Data Warehouse' approach and their technology focus and investment, I would expect that there will be little or no chance of further development of ADLA (or adding it as a supported data source in PBI), as much of the focus is now on Azure Databricks. Databricks and Delta tables has replaced ADLA in the 'Modern Data Warehouse' and other architecture outlines.
Hope that helps
