Forum Discussion
Does Power BI Process Refresh Partitions Sequentially or in Parallel?
Hi manoj_0911,
Incremental Refresh -
Power BI creates multiple partitions and processes them during refresh. These partitions are not processed strictly one after another, multiple partitions can be processed in parallel (subject to engine limits and capacity).
Microsoft explains the partitioning behavior here - https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-overviewFull Refresh -
Similarly, during a full refresh, Power BI does not process all tables or partitions sequentially. Multiple tables and/or partitions can be refreshed concurrently, which means multiple queries can hit the SQL Server source at the same time.Control over Refresh parallelism -
There’s no direct setting to control partition-level parallelism in Power BI. However, with Premium/PPU and the XMLA endpoint, you can explicitly control how partitions are processed.Microsoft explains Advanced incremental refresh and real-time data with the XMLA endpoint - https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-xmla
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Best regards,
Rupasree Achari | BI & Fabric Analytics Engineer
Hi manoj_0911
Incremental Refresh = Power BI processes multiple partitions in parallel and might not be strictly sequential.
Full Refresh = Tables and partitions can also be refreshed concurrently and multiple queries against SQL Server are expected.
Documentation Links
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-xmla
Settings = No simple toggle in Power BI Desktop/Service. Parallelism is managed automatically by the engine and Premium capacity offers more control via XMLA.
Expected behavior = Yes, seeing multiple concurrent SQL queries during refresh is
normal.