Changes to tabular model and the analysis services connector

[jimcris]

I found that there may be a caching issue or something related to the power bi ssas connector and ssas tabular model schema changes. The behavior I observed is that if I make a change to the tabular model (i.e. add new columns, measures, tables, etc.) Then go back to the web UI, it doesn’t show those changes. I tried selecting a different dataset and then going back to the changed dataset and it still doesn’t pick up the changes. I even tried refreshing the browser and closing and restarting the browser and the changes still don’t show. What I ended up doing was going to the server and stopping the ssas connector service and the restarting it and then when I go to the browser and select the dataset I see the changes. I was working through some training with several customers and didn’t have time to wait a long time to see if it eventually shows up (over the course of the things I tried I believe about 8-10 minutes elapsed before I restarted the service) Not sure if anyone has reported this

[Tsanka]

Hi guys,

Has the issue been solved?

Do you know a way to force the Enterprise gateway to refresh the tabular structure?

Thanks

Tsanka

[AaronLS]

No it hasn't been solved.  I encounter this regularly unfortunately.

[afailor]

So, as a last resort, I tried restarting the connector and believe it or not, that connection, and thus all reports associated with it, will not refresh at all.  So, if you have a lot of reports on top of the connection, be cautious before going this route.

Still don't know a solid work-around to this, yet.

[hereri]

Any news on this one? We are struggeling with this for multiple customers. I have experienced it taking up to 10 hours or more even seeing an existing calculated column being added to a new perspective. 

[ckerer]

Hi,

changes to on-prem AS models should get detected every 10 minutes. We tried to repro your scenario and found that the model change was propagated after > 10 minutes as expected. In order to make it show up in the browser, you have to refresh the browser though.

There is clearly room for improvement here - from automatically reflecting the change in the browser to an option to trigger a model refresh explicitly. I am forwarding this information to our program management team.

If you find the time, we would appreciate it if you could try your scenario again and double-check that you can see the updated model after > 10 minutes and refreshing the browser. Another gotcha I learned about is that you need to re-process the model for the entire AS database; processing the model partially is not good enough.

Thanks,

Clemens.

[afailor]

I have been having the same problem as is described in this thread and I just waited 20+ minutes after the changes were deployed to the SSAS instance and still do not see the new measure.

I have tried just about everything with this.  Nothing seams to solve the problem reliably.

[leonido]

Hi,

Got very similar problem:

After Tabular model was updated - new fields were added to the fact table - change wasn't reflected by the powerbi site. Nothing made it happend - not the service restart, not even SSAS service restart and obviously not the browser restart. 10-15 min waiting period was not able to resolve the problem. Even after several hours of waiting the problem still persisted. Looking on profiler output on the server I noticed that Model refresh tracker query was still pointing to the date of initial service start. The only thing that helped was adding power bi user from the site someone@mycompanyonmicrosoft,com directly to the roles of the tabular db. So effective user was able to refresh the data, but the model itself required the original user. 

Any idea why?

Leonid

[Bjoern]

@leonido @Anonymous

Which user have you used for SSAS Connector?

[Anonymous]

Hello Bjeorn,

I am still in development stage, so I am using my own account for connector.

[Bjoern]

@Anonymous

Good to know, i would have assumed that the error could have been created by a mismatch of user names there.

Regarding the AS Connector I have experienced problems myself in the last days:

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Publishing-to-Service-in-November-Update/m-p/10787#U10787

Although it is a pretty strong recommendation - perhaps you could try to use the latest AS Connector (if you have not done it so far)?

[Anonymous]

Hi Bjeorn, 

The connector was only installed last week, so unless it has had an update, it shouldn't be a problem. But I will check it now.

Thanks,

Ankit

[Anonymous]

I'm experiencing lags with the SSAS connector - the model changes show up eventually but the refresh seems to be sporodic in my experience.

If we pass away control re Deployment we at least need consistent and regular services that devs and users can rely on. 

Just last week I was working on an SSRS project and hitting that deploy button in VS sure does help with test driven development.

Having said that I still value the Power BI service.  I hope these issues get smoothed out over time.

 Lee

[Anonymous]

@Bjoern

I was able to refresh the data source by logging onto a different computer. It would appear that it could be a broswer caching issue.

[Anonymous]

@Bjoern

Made another change to the cube to test out, it would appear that browser cache has nothing to do with it. The analysis service connector doesn't seem to send structural updates for hour or so.

[afailor]

I feel the same way.  I'm thinking it's an issue with the connector.

[greggyb]

Make sure to file bug reports through the send feedback menu item in the Power BI Service. The forums are great for discussion, but the official medium of bug reports is the feedback menu.

[Anonymous]

We have the same problem. I updated the name of a measure in tabular cube. The power BI desktop picked that up straight away however even after 30 minutes the power BI online hasn't. So the Power BI dataset now has fields that are no longer in the cube and hence do not work and yet I can't get it to update. I tried refreshing the report, the browser, processing the cube (Full), restarting Analysis connector. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Ankit