Am I doing this wrong? Too much refreshing or "thinking" when editing queries in Power BI

[brianjwilson]

I build a lot of reports in Power BI that have complex queries run in import mode against an SAP HANA database. I understand why the initial load via Get Data would take a couple of minutes to load. But then, when I make tweaks to the query in query editor I find myself spending a lot of time waiting for what appears to be "refreshing" behind the scenes. First when I click OK on the query editor after editing the query. Next after closing out the query editor window (the window that shows all of my queries). But even then the data hasn't been refreshed, so once again when I choose to refresh that query to see the result of the change. Why does Power BI (or Power Query) spend so much time "thinking" about each one of those things, vs. just allowing me to make the tweaks and then "thinking" when I finally refresh the data? And is there anything I can do to speed things up and skip some of those interim steps? Thanks for your help in understanding!

[lbendlin]

 But then, when I make tweaks to the query in query editor I find myself spending a lot of time waiting for what appears to be "refreshing" behind the scenes.

Welcome to the club of the "Evaluating..."  sufferers.  Every time you make a change to the query Power Query will throw away everything it has learned about the data source and will re-request all the meta data.  EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

Make fewer changes. Make them in bulk.  Disable background refresh.  Factor in the time lost to this step.  Pro tip: If you cancel this process it will not be any faster the next time around.