Forum Discussion
Working with Large Data
It depends.
If you have a very large data set but you need to work with only a subset of the data, then when you set up your filters in the Query Editor it will only import the subset. Keep in mind that there are file size limits and workspace storage limits for your PBI service.
If you need to work with the entire data set, I would recommend using Direct Query (if the underlying source is compatible with DQ). There are some limitations here with regards to DAX, but DQ will not import any data into the data model meaning size is not an issue.
I'd love to know how the import filtering works and how to optimize the query to minimize the import. I have a table with 60M records, which I need to filter on two different criteria, which then selects a few thousand rows which are actually part of the final imported table. However whenever I refresh the query, Power BI is importing about 16M records over ODBC from our CRM which literally takes hours. It's obvioulsy doing some filtering, because it doesn't grab the whole database, but it's pulling in way more than make it through the filters and into the table