- The Report Designer as the Controller plays the role of managing the interaction between the data (Model) and the presentation (View).
- Responsibilities of the Report Designer as Controller:
- Defining Business Rules: The Report Designer integrates business logic by designing DAX measures and choosing how to connect data with the right visuals.
- User Interaction: The designer sets up interactivity (e.g., slicers, filters, drill-downs) and determines how user actions impact the report, acting as the intermediary between the raw data and the user interface.
- Managing Data Interpretation: The Report Designer decides which data elements should be displayed and how they should be interpreted, ensuring that users receive meaningful insights from the data.
- Handling Input: Although end users are the ones interacting with the report (through filters and slicers), the Report Designer sets up those options, ensuring the user has an intuitive and useful interaction.
- Iterating on Feedback: The designer modifies the report based on feedback, adding new elements, changing logic, or altering views to better match business needs and user requirements.
Treating the Report Designer as the Controller in Power BI makes sense because they are responsible for orchestrating how data (Model) interacts with the user interface (View). The designer’s decisions define how business rules are applied, how data is processed, and how the user interacts with it. In this sense, the Report Designer does act as the intermediary that controls the interaction between the dataset and the end user’s view of the report.