Forum Discussion
Real Time Dashboard
Hi ShivaPr,
lbendlin clarified the approach, I just add that the automatic page refresh needs at least a Premium Per User licence (or a dedicated Capacity)
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Francesco Bergamaschi
MBA, M.Eng, M.Econ, Professor of BI
A true “every 5 seconds” real-time dashboard is not realistic in Power BI with Databricks, but you have a few near-real-time options.
Option 1: DirectQuery to Azure Databricks
This is the closest you’ll get.
How it works:
Use DirectQuery connection to Databricks
Visuals re-query the source on interaction
Data is as fresh as Databricks at query time
Limits to know:
Power BI auto page refresh minimum is 30 seconds (with Premium / Fabric)
On Pro/shared capacity, auto page refresh is very limited or unavailable
Heavy dashboards will struggle if queries are complex
This gives near-real-time, not 5 seconds.
Option 2: Direct Lake (if you’re on Fabric)
If Databricks writes to OneLake / Delta tables:
Use Direct Lake semantic model
No import refresh needed
Very fast query performance
New data becomes visible as files land
Still:
Visual refresh is not every 5 seconds automatically
Best for high-volume, low-latency analytics
Option 3: Streaming / Push datasets
Power BI streaming datasets can update in seconds, BUT:
They don’t work with Databricks directly
Limited visuals
No complex DAX / relationships
Usually not suitable for enterprise dashboards.