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MaadiKemko's avatar
MaadiKemko
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago
Solved

Difference between Reference and Duplicate

Hi All,   I am a newbie in Power Bi. Can anyone explaine me what is the actual Difference between Reference and Duplicate of a table.  Please see the below image.   Thanks in Advance, Maadi. ...
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  • BhaveshPatel's avatar
    BhaveshPatel
    9 years ago

    In simple terms, Duplicate will duplicate the code of the query while Query Reference will only refer the result of the query.

    Duplicate is generally used when you would like to create a similar query and you do not want to type the same code. You can make changes to this query.

    Reference in Query means you would like to use that Query results in some other queries where your original query remains as a base Query and it can be used in other queries for the further processing. 

BhaveshPatel's avatar
BhaveshPatel
Super User
9 years ago

In simple terms, Duplicate will duplicate the code of the query while Query Reference will only refer the result of the query.

Duplicate is generally used when you would like to create a similar query and you do not want to type the same code. You can make changes to this query.

Reference in Query means you would like to use that Query results in some other queries where your original query remains as a base Query and it can be used in other queries for the further processing. 

nirrobi's avatar
nirrobi
Helper V
8 years ago

Hi,

 

What about performane differnces between the 2 methods?

 

Thanks

  • shzyincu's avatar
    shzyincu
    Helper I
    8 years ago

    Well i believe the Duplication does impact as creating another OBJECT in the memory, where as referencing does not.

    • Sokon's avatar
      Sokon
      Advocate V
      8 years ago

      But it DOES create another object, doesn't it? When I have 10 queries that reference query A, then refreshing the dataset results in loading query A 10 times. Or at least that's what is shown in the loading window. Any idea how to avoid loading the data 10 times?

      • pade's avatar
        pade
        Advocate III
        7 years ago

        If you need 10 copies of your table (by some reason) you can always do this at DAX level by:

         

        copy1=originalTable
copy2=originaltable
etc...

        If you first need to manipulate the table you can do this using any filter functions in DAX, e.g.

        copy1=calculatetable(originalTable, column1="filterValue1"
copy2=calculatetable(originalTable, column1="filterValue2"
etc...