Applying Changes Before Publish, No Refresh

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

I wanted to know if there was a way to apply changes to a datasource without applying the refresh to the data, that way I can publish without wasting 20 or so minutes waiting for the data to load.

I currently develop reports by limiting the rows for my tables to only grab the first 100,000 rows. Then before publishing I have to allow all rows and the waiting for the data refresh is very annoying as I wish I could just apply the changes and let the data refresh once published. I also have hardware limitations since my dataset is quite large and can sometimes not be held in the amount of RAM my company laptop has.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

Maybe you can try to parameterize your connection string with query parameters then you can modify them on the power bi service side.

Using the Power BI Service Parameters to change connection strings (To possibly change between Dev 

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng

[Anonymous]

I have started to try to create reports just using Direct Query to avoid issues with large data sets in general. However your suggestion would have worked for this particular problem. 

[negi007]

@Anonymous Yes, you can publish your report without refreshing the data. But in case you make any changes in the powerquery window so you will have to apply changes and then only you will be able to publish the latest file/dataset. Your powerbi desktop will ask for applying changes which will refresh the dataset.

In case you wish to implement some changes that you can make in your powerbi desktop window then you should not touch your powerbi query window. Basically making any changes in powerquery window is basically those changes are not yet in the dataset so till that time you do not have those changes in your dataset how can you have changes in your powerbi report.

let me know if i have been able to clear your doubts. thanks

[Anonymous]

So, pretty much there is no way to enable a change and publish immediately. My main issue is that I have multiple reports that I need to create small changes to in powerquery like removing some columns or changing a data type, but then that means waiting around for 20 minutes just for the ability to publish, this isn't too big of a deal but if I modify 4 reports in a day thats over a hour of wasted time; as I cannot run two reports at the same time due to hardware limitations. Is there no way to apply the changes until after I upload either?

[negi007]

@Anonymous  basically here you are making changes in the structure of the dataset. those changes will not reflect in your dataset till the time you do not apply changes. This is the reason, you will have to apply changes to have those changes in the dataset. Boz according to those changes your data will be processed.