Forum Discussion
Problems with refreshing of semantic model - continuation
Hi Ostrzak
Power BI suspends automatic updates when a non-recoverable error is encountered during refresh. A non-recoverable error can occur, for example, when a refresh fails after several attempts. So, make sure your semantic model can be refreshed successfully. You can go to Refresh history to check the status of refreshes for a semantic model. Check if there are any failures there.
For a custom semantic model in Direct Lake mode, you can try refreshing it manually or configure schedule refresh for it when you notice that the data is not updated.
A Direct Lake semantic model refresh operation might evict all resident columns from memory. That means the first queries after a refresh of a Direct Lake semantic model could experience some delay as columns are loaded into memory. Delays might only be noticeable when you have extremely large volumes of data. To avoid such delays, consider warming the cache by programmatically sending a query to the semantic model. A convenient way to send a query is to use semantic link. This operation should be done immediately after the refresh operation finishes.
But notice that warming the cache might only make sense when delays are unacceptable. Take care not to unnecessarily load data into memory that could place pressure on other capacity workloads, causing them to throttle or become deprioritized. Reference: Manage Direct Lake semantic models - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
To learn more about how Direct Lake works and the data storage behinds it, please refer to the following documents:
Understand storage for Direct Lake semantic models - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
In my understanding, Direct Lake semantic models only load needed columns into the memory, not all data. And the columns might get removed from the memory for some reasons. Please refer to Column loading (transcoding) section.
Best Regards,
Jing
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