Explicit Measures Podcast 475: Source Control in BI - Necessary, Painful, or Both?
Nov 12, 2025
Dive into the crucial topic of source control in business intelligence. Discover if serialization formats like database.json and TMDL help more than they hinder team collaboration. Learn about file granularity and its role in reducing merge conflicts. The hosts tackle common pitfalls in conflict resolution and ponder whether AI can assist with merges. Plus, get practical tips on starting with Git and how to integrate it into your development workflows for a smoother process.
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Source Control Enables True Teamwork
- Source control unlocks collaborative development by breaking monolithic PBIX files into smaller, trackable artifacts.
- Serialization (TMDL/PBIP/save-to-folder) lets teams work concurrently and see granular changes without opaque binaries.
Concurrency Is The Core Problem Source Control Solves
- Concurrent development means interleaved workstreams, even for one person switching tasks mid-feature.
- Source control's main value is managing those concurrent versions and merging them back together safely.
Granularity Makes Diffs Useful
- Granular serialization exposes meaningful diffs to Git by creating many small files for tables, columns, and measures.
- The more granular the files, the more informative and manageable the version history becomes.