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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
2 years ago

Appending Current Data to Large Static Data Set & Incremental Refresh

Unsure if this is the right forum, or PBI Service ( my apologies for duplication) I'm designing a report that has two tables (Historical & Current) loaded from a Power BI Dataflow into a single Po...
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rohit1991's avatar
rohit1991
Super User
1 year ago

Hi, Anonymous 

 

Great question! I’ve set this up a few times and here’s what works best (and keeps things efficient):

 

  1. Do the append outside Power BI if you can (SQL, Dataflow, etc.), so you only load a single, combined table into Power BI. It keeps the model lean and refresh fast.

  2. Apply incremental refresh to just the appended table, set up your date column for partitioning. Only new/current data gets refreshed; historic stays static.

  3. Disable Load for the Historic/Current tables in Power BI. Just right-click and “Disable Load” so only your final table is loaded and visible. This way, extra tables aren’t taking up memory or storage.

  4. For XMLA endpoints/partitioning: Only tables that are loaded can be managed with XMLA, so again focus on the appended table and keep everything else disabled.

So in short: prep and combine your data upstream, bring only the finished table into Power BI, and set incremental refresh on that. This will give you optimal refresh times and keep the workspace tidy.