Theoretical questions

[vnicholl]

1) Got a couple of great answers here. My last answer, what if we need to put the calculation statements on different reports? Is there a way to share a formula among several reports? If not, and we needed to change the formula, how would we keep what reports had what formula straight? 

2) I have a table with 600K records. A refresh takes 4 hours or so. Is there any way to cut that down? Would I need to recreate the table with just the fields that we use or would I need to use the transform option and that would work?

Thanks, 

Vic

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@vnicholl So, the recommendation would be to use a single dataset and use Live connections to that dataset. This way all reports would have all of the measures available within the dataset. The way to cut down refresh times would be to implement incremental refresh.

[vnicholl]

So you are saying we would need to add to that table the extra fields? Basically remove it from PowerBI and put it on the backend?

How would we do an incremental refresh? We refresh or recreate our tables every night. Or is there another way to do so in Power BI? 

Thanks. 

[Greg_Deckler]

@vnicholl Right, so add all your measures and columns into a central "golden" dataset. Use a Power BI dataset connection (Live connection) from other PBIX files. This might help: Power BI Usage Models in Pictures! - Microsoft Power BI Community. Also, Connect to datasets in the Power BI service from Power BI Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Incremental refresh allows you to refresh only new and changed data. Incremental refresh for datasets and real-time data in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs