topic Lakehouse Table schema change does not reflect in Custom Direct Lake semantic model in Data Engineering

Lakehouse Table schema change does not reflect in Custom Direct Lake semantic model

balafbm — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 14:11:42 GMT

I have multiple tables in my Lakehouse. Inside the Lakehouse, I clicked on the "New semantic model" option to create a direct lake semantic model, import the tables and create relationships.

Later, one of the tables required additional columns, so I altered the schema in the Lakehouse to add the additional columns.

After adding these additional columns, the semantic model does not reflect these new additions by default.

I will have to "remove" the table from the model and re-add the table, and only then these new columns are visible in the table.

This is a huge problem, especially when I have to recreate the table relationships all over again given that it is a FACT table.

I have read this blog post from Microsoft: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-in/blog/improvements-for-creating-new-direct-lake-semantic-models/ which says that "In custom Direct Lake models, schema changes are not updated automatically without user intervention. This behavior is comparable to import and DirectQuery semantic models in Power BI."

This does not make any sense.

Why should I remove, re-add and create the relationships again just because of schema changes (additional columns) in the table?

Re: Lakehouse Table schema change does not reflect in Custom Direct Lake semantic model

v-saisrao-msft — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 06:02:05 GMT

Hi @balafbm,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.

Since this is a known limitation, I suggest submitting it to the Microsoft Fabric Ideas forum. If it receives enough votes, the product team might include it in a future update.

Fabric Ideas - Microsoft Fabric Community

Edit tables for Direct Lake semantic models - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

Hope this helps

Thank you.

Re: Lakehouse Table schema change does not reflect in Custom Direct Lake semantic model

spaceman127 — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:18:35 GMT

Hi @balafbm

the article that @v-saisrao-msft adds in his post describes this quite accurately. You basically just need to update the schema and your changes should be reflected.
Deleting and recreating the relationships is not necessary.

Best regards

Re: Lakehouse Table schema change does not reflect in Custom Direct Lake semantic model

balafbm — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:32:55 GMT

My bad.

I believe this has been fixed.

Link to the documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/fundamentals/direct-lake-edit-tables#editing-a-semantic-model-in-direct-lake-mode-in-web-modeling

We need to open the "Edit Tables" dialog. Click on the "refresh icon" and then click "Confirm".

This is now reflecting the additional columns.

Re: Lakehouse Table schema change does not reflect in Custom Direct Lake semantic model

v-saisrao-msft — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 08:32:58 GMT

Hi @balafbm,

Thank you for your insights. Please mark your helpful reply as the solution so it can assist other community members facing the same issue.