IDEA: UDFs deserialized from database.json file

[ricky7uio]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Dear TE team,
Hope you are doing fine.

We have been enjoying the new DAX User Defined Functions (UDF) feature and would like to share a suggestion that could improve collaboration in source-controlled environments.

One challenge we are encountering is that DAX UDF definitions are currently stored within the Database.json file. When multiple developers work on different functions simultaneously, this often leads to merge conflicts because the same file is being modified by several contributors at the same time.

Describe the solution you'd like

We would like to propose the possibility of introducing a more granular serialization/deserialization approach for DAX UDFs, similar to the granularity that Tabular Editor already provides for measures. While TMDL typically organizes content at the table level, one of the major advantages of Tabular Editor is its ability to store measures in individual files, significantly reducing source control conflicts and making collaborative development easier.

Goals

A similar approach for DAX UDFs could provide several benefits:

• Reduced merge conflicts and improved collaboration when multiple developers work on different functions in parallel.
• Cleaner Git workflows with more focused commits, easier code reviews, and better traceability of function-level changes.
• Greater maintainability and consistency through alignment with Tabular Editor’s existing granular serialization approach for reusable objects.

Background

No response

Additional context

We understand there may be technical considerations that make this challenging, but we would be interested in hearing whether such an enhancement would be feasible or if it is already being considered for future releases.

Thank you for the excellent work on Tabular Editor and for continuously improving the development experience for the community.

Best regards,
Ricardo

[mlonsk]

Hi @ricky7uio
I think it makes sense to introduce UDFs as serializable layer so that each UDF gets its own json file. Thank you for raising this, we have logged the idea on our backlog and will look into how to implement it.