Hi NiladriM,

Even though BIX is an ETL tool it cannot transform the source data in to different formats and load the data in to target DB. The main purpose of BIX tool is to deflate the data that is inside the BLOB and insert in to in-house or separate data base so that this data can be used for any other reporting purposes by down stream systems. Any other tool cannot read this data from the BLOB as the data in the column is understandable by Pega. BIX doesn't have any configurations to transform the data in to various formats and load it to external DB. The data in Pega DB is loaded in to external DB as is by deflating the BLOB. As this is within Pega data extraction will be quick. 

Power BI : Power BI is an ETL tool and predominantly it is used for Reporting purposes. Power BI can have the capability to read the flat columns but it cannot understand the BLOB column of Pega as there wont be specific configuration to read the BLOB column of Pega. But BIX extract rule is the configuration in Pega that will be used to configure the properties for which the data is required. The properties can be either the exposed columns or the property residing inside the BLOB.

As per my knowledge BIX is only the reporting tool that is used widely to pull the Pega Data.

As of now Reports in Pega can be built only by using existing Reporting feature. But as reporting will consider millions of records to provide various in-sights on the data the best way is to use external reporting tools as they are specifically built for that purpose and also they will be having support for various functionalities and advanced features. If we use Pega for pulling large sets of data this will result in degrading the Performance of the system.

Hi, It is good question, helped to explore about power BI Integration option.

Power BI has the option to read the data from database tables, so you can try connecting with pega database. Refer below diagram.

For this demonstration, I tried with postgres SQL pega data schema pr_operators table, though table has a blob column Power BI reads the table data excluding blob column.

If you have the correct data in exposed column, it will work well

I am able to successfully connect and show data and chart in power BI desktop 

Steps 

1. Download Power BI desktop version 

2. Hope you have a personal edition Pega installed with postgres SQL in your machine, if not install any version 

3. Open a Power BI, under Home menu, click on get data, click on more option

4. Power BI will open Get Data pop up 

5. Click on database category 

6. Select postgresql database, connect 

7. If the sql driver is installed it will request. server name and credentials.

    server: localhost. database: postgres, connectivity mode: import 

    Else install the required driver and add the credentials 

8. Power BI will show Navigator view, from there select required tables and  click on load.

10. Add pyusername column in pie chart legend and value.

11. Another simple option create a simple DB view excluding blob column on top of pega tables, connect the db views with Power BI

      Datatype created in pega with COVID data and also created DB view for data type table 

      final view in power BI