How to Import a Subset of Data From Amazon Redshift

[jaradc]

I'm new to Power BI, "M / Query Editor / Power Pivot", and DAX language. As a new user, I have several questions after spending the last 2 days getting familiar with it.

1. I am connecting to a Amazon RedShift datasource with 6,000,000 records. Power BI is terribly slow while using Query Editor. I have a date field in the datasource so I want to import into Power BI ONLY dates for a specific year to reduce the stress on Power BI and increase my speed of learning (rather than waiting for all 6,000,000 records to process each time). When I imported, I selected Edit > Query Editor popped up > converted my date column to Date/Time datatype > filtered that date by 1 year time (about 2,000,000 records) > and completed. However, when I run any type of query in Query Editor, I notice that a row count appears in the bottom-right during an operation. Instead of going up to 2,000,000 rows (the records I thought I imported), it still processes 6,000,000. My question: how do I only import a SUBSET of data into Power BI instead of importing ALL of the data from Redshift?
2. If I duplicate a query, it duplicates everything including the Applied Steps. What if I just want to duplicate the TABLE at that specific point in time WITHOUT the applied steps? In other words, after applying steps, is there a way to copy the static table (for example, as a lookup table?) and paste as a "query" or table that can be used to merge on?
3. If I want to do a Group By, is it common to copy the ENTIRE query, duplicate it, and do the groupby on that duplicated table? Usually I just want a pivot-table-like result but it seems like overkill to duplicate a potentially HUGE table, just to aggregate it. Is there a different way I should be making lookup-like tables?

[v-chuncz-msft]

@jaradc,

Many operations in Query Editor are applied to the underlying Amazon Redshift database itself (if supported). You may try DirectQuery mode and do research into The Advanced Editor. To create a PivotTable, just load data into a data model and use a Matrix visual.