Historical partitions in SSMS via XMLA

[purple_SP]

Hello I'm trying to follow this tutorial from Guy in a Cube to use XMLA through SSMS to refresh historical data incrementally. I have set up incremental refresh in Desktop by using the RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters and specified 120 days history and 1 day incremental. However, when I try to view the partitions in SSMS, I can only see a single partition: 

I only have a single day's worth of data at the moment, however a few months of historical data will soon be ingested to the source, so I was planning to set up the partitions in preparation for when the data is ready.

Is the reason why I am only seeing one partition because I just have a day's worth of data at the moment? The reason I ask is because when I check the refresh history of dataflows with incremental refresh configured, they still show historical partitions where no data exists. 

Also, from my understanding the values I specify for RangeStart and RangeEnd are more or less arbitrary and only effect the data loaded when I am working in Desktop. When I actually publish to Service and refresh, the data that gets included is that which is specified by the incremental refreshes 'history' parameter. Is this assumption correct?

[purple_SP]

Thanks for the explanation!

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @purple_SP 

What happens is when you do the first refresh it will then apply the Incremental Refresh policy which will first create all the partitions.

Automatically it will then start loading each individual partition with the required data.

Once the refresh is complete you will then be able to go into SSMS and see all the individual partitions.