In this article we will connect a CosmosDB graph collection to PowerBI to enable various kinds of reporting based on the dataset. We will be using the built-in CosmosDB connector available in PowerBI Desktop to connect and access data from our graph using both a wizard-like visual way as well as a more code driven approach.

First up, open PowerBI desktop and find the CosmosDB Connector:

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The fundamental pricing unit in cosmos is called Request Unit. The RequestUnit is a measure of throughput and it is an abstraction over compute, memory and IOPS required to serve a request. The idea with the model is that number of request units required for an operation is deterministic so a query will always cost the same. The cost of every operation is returned back to the client via the SDK or response headers so you can always track and manage your cost.

So, what happens if you’re trying to use more than you have provisioned? Every time you issue a request that would consume more resources than available, Cosmos will reject the call and return details about how long you should wait before issuing the query again for best chance of execution.
If you’re using the Cosmos SDK you are going to benefit from a built-in automatic retry policy that will try and seamlessly rerun your query according to the timeouts recommended in Cosmos. If Cosmos still can’t fulfill the request, the SDK will eventually give up (default policy is to retry 5 times) and you will get an “Request rate too large” exception that you will need to handle manually.
With this functionality, often times you don’t even have to worry about exceeding the provisioned resources, assuming you are not getting long-running or very high spikes in load.

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Working with CosmosDB in your applcation is pretty easy. There are tons of tutorials and sample code that shows how you can easily connect your code to ComsosDb and start coding. However, most if not all of them, will at somepoint say [Insert your CosmosDB Key here]. Which means you are essentially taking your most critical piece of defense (your authentication key) and copying it somewhere in your code or configuration. Invariably, at some point it will get into your source control, and that’s just asking for trouble down the line because it’s way harder to restrict access to sensitive information in source control.

Fortunately, there’s an easy (?) way to deal with this problem and it involves a few built-in Azure features like Azure KeyVault and Managed Identity.

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There are a few ways you can explore your data in CosmosDB, either via the Azure Portal or with the Azure CosmosDB Graph Explorer - here. However, I wanted a quicker way that I can run queries and check results and performance locally so I created a console app that allows you to do just that.

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ComsosDB is the first database system that promises <10ms latency on reads at the 99 percentile, and backs it up by an SLA. The way to achieve that performance though is though smart partitioning of your data. Here are a couple of notes that you can use when designing your queries that will definitely help improve performance - especially in an unlimited collection (one with multiple physical partitions)

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On top of being faster than the original client, the Gremlin.NET native driver comes with a couple more features that make it really appealing to use: Fluent API and Query Bindings

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Up until recently, the only way to communicate with the CosmosDB Graph API was though the DocDB Graph Client - Microsoft.Azure.Graph . Like I mentioned in some of my older posts that was not the most optimal implementation.
Luckily we can now use a native Gremlin driver to communicate with the CosmosDB graph database. Gremlin.NET is an open source generic Gremlin driver that can be used to communicate to a CosmosDB Graph account.

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Deploying a web application on azure is incredibly easy these days. You can handle everything, including creating a whole new web app and app service directly from Visual Studio. A lot of times we deploy these small web apps as internal tools for our team or company but we must not forget about securing those behind a log-in so that they are not accessible to anyone trying out domains at azurewebsites.net

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Azure CosmosDB Graph Explorer is a great opensource tool that allows you to easily and quickly visualize the data you have in your Azure CosmosDB Graph (yes, just graph at the moment).

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