Forum Discussion
incremental refresh from an on-premises SQL Server into Power BI takes longer
Hi Alaahady ,
Thank you for sharing the scheduled refresh details.
This behavior looks expected. The initial longer refresh was due to incremental refresh creating and evaluating all partitions. The subsequent scheduled refreshes are completing consistently, which confirms that only the incremental partitions are now being processed.
At this point, incremental refresh is working as designed. Please let us know if you notice any increase in refresh duration going forward.
Thank you.
Hi Alaahady ,
Thank you for sharing the additional screenshots, and I appreciate Zanqueta for earlier explanation .
Since you’ve confirmed that query folding continues to the final step and that your incremental refresh policy is correctly configured, the setup itself looks correct. In cases like this, longer incremental refresh times are typically driven by engine behavior rather than configuration issues.
Incremental refresh must process multiple partitions and run an additional query for change detection, which often results in longer total execution time compared to a single full refresh query even when folding and indexing are in place. Factors such as partition granularity, change-detection overhead, and SQL Server index/statistics efficiency can further influence performance.
If possible, please share the duration of a subsequent refresh cycle (not the initial run). This will help us confirm whether the refresh stabilizes once only the incremental partitions are being processed. Let us know, and we’ll be happy to assist further.
Thank you.
Hi Anonymous
Thank you for your help, here is the subsequestint scheduled refresh
Hi Alaahady ,
Thank you for sharing the scheduled refresh details.
This behavior looks expected. The initial longer refresh was due to incremental refresh creating and evaluating all partitions. The subsequent scheduled refreshes are completing consistently, which confirms that only the incremental partitions are now being processed.
At this point, incremental refresh is working as designed. Please let us know if you notice any increase in refresh duration going forward.
Thank you.
Hi Anonymous
Thank you for your kind support and explanation.
Alaa