In this link it is recommended to use a centralized workspace with datasets.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/deployment-pipelines-best-practices

However in Deployment Pipelines -> Deployment Settings, when creating a "Dataset Rule", the only option to use another dataset is to add new connection string.  This creates a new dataset in the Workspace.

This seems to contradict the suggestion to use Workspace with centralized datasets.

"Deployment pipelines best practices

If you're using centralized datasets that are used across the organization, we recommend that you create two types of workspaces:

• Modeling and data workspaces - These workspaces will contain all the centralized datasets"

From my understanding, it should be possible to link a Dataset Rule to a Dataset in another Workspace.

This would allow to have one dataset per environment (e.g. DEV) for all pipelines.