Power BI Performance consuming a huge amount of data from CosmosDB

[juliovaz96]

Hey friends,

How are you?

I have a data architecture based on CosmosDB. Basically I have an Worker Role that connects to an API and brings the RAW DATA (JSON) to many CosmosDB collections (1 colletion per API).

I would like to consume this data through Power BI and of course, shape this data to create a report. Do you have some considerations or best practices on that scenario? Is it ok to have the transformation of that raw data in Power BI?

In summary:

Partner API <---> Worker Role (Azure Function) ---> CosmosDB.      <------- Power BI to transform & shape the data & deliver reports to our customers. 

[GTPowerBIUser]

I dont have a ton of experience in this area but check out the incremental refresh. That might assist with reducing the amount of data you need to refresh: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-premium-incremental-refresh

When I do have alot of data, I find that the desktop version always wants to download everything. To get around this you can simply set it to only download a fraction of the data in Power Query, upload to the web version and then do the refresh there to see how your visuals work out. This of course requires you to share the web version with folks, not the desktop version.