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stanteitelbaum's avatar
stanteitelbaum
Regular Visitor
1 year ago
Solved

is it a direct query or import

hi i was surprised when my co worker told me she was getting a memory exception when trying to import our sales cube into pbi on her desktop.   and that as much as she didnt want to, was using direct...
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  • v-kpoloju-msft's avatar
    v-kpoloju-msft
    1 year ago

    Hi stanteitelbaum,

    Thanks for the follow up. From the screenshots you have shared, it is now clear that your Power BI file is using a Live connection to a SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) model.

    • In Live mode, you can create measures but not calculated columns that’s expected behaviour.
    • The “Storage mode” does not appear in the Properties pane because it's only available for Import or Direct Query models.
    • When you go to Data Source Settings and see the SSAS server prompt, that confirms it’s not an Import mode.

    So yes, your PBIX file is connected live, and not importing data, which is why your refreshes work fine and you are not running into memory issues.

    If your coworker is trying to import the full model into Power BI, that could cause memory exceptions, especially with large datasets (e.g., 66M rows). Instead, she could try:

    • Using a Live connection (same as yours),
    • Ensuring she's on the 64-bit Power BI version,
    • Or reducing data size during import via filters.

    Please refer to the below mentioned link:
    Connect to Analysis Services data in Power BI Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

    Hope this helps. If this post helps, then please give us ‘Kudos’ and consider Accept it as a solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

    Thank you for using Microsoft Community Forum.

speedramps's avatar
speedramps
Icon for Super User rankSuper User
1 year ago

You will get this message in Power Bi desktop

 

Consider applying a filter to your query for just 1 record.

If that works then increase it to 10 records.

Then check the visual.  Is the use trying to display all records instaed of just the total.
That may exceed the capacity.

Change the visual to sum the total. Then change the filter to all records.

Does it now work ok?

 

stanteitelbaum's avatar
stanteitelbaum
Regular Visitor
1 year ago

hi again speedramps.   she is already using a filter (basic filtering) on both pages for only one fiscal year from a list of fiscal years where she has that box checked.   i dont know any other way to filter a semantic model whose power query isnt visible.   i dont know if the handshake between pbi and ssas in import mode is smart enough to make that one selection more efficient than it would be otherwise but that really reduces the population to 4.5 million facts.    i dont know how a semantic model can be reusable if ssas is smart enough to make this distinction so who knows, maybe she's importing everything anyway.  i dont know if she put that filter on all pages whether pbi would act differently.   my refreshes are fine so for the moment i'll direct her to    vkopoloju's ideas and see what happens.   she already has 32 gig ram.