Forum Discussion
Large datasets
Hi ganaa0810,
The main challenge isn't the size of your PBIX file on desktop, but rather the full refresh that occurs after every model change in the Power BI Service. Even though your PBIX is only 230 MB locally, publishing a model with incremental refresh enabled causes the Service to rebuild the entire dataset once, including all historical data. This process can exceed Pro capacity limits or result in connection timeouts since the Service tries to load two years of data at once. This is expected behavior for Pro: after any model change, incremental refresh can't reuse previous partitions and must reprocess everything. Premium/PPU offers more capacity, faster refreshes, and advanced features like loading data without reprocessing all history. Your approach is correct, but your model has reached a size where Pro struggles during the initial full refresh. On Power BI Pro, you can temporarily reduce the refresh window (such as loading only 6 months), publish, and then expand the window. For a more stable solution, consider moving to PPU or Premium for better handling of large historical data loads.
Thank you.
Hi ganaa0810
Your model worked when the data was small, but the moment two years of history came in, the whole setup got too heavy for a Pro workspace. When you changed the model and republished, Power BI had to run a full refresh again, not an incremental one, and that full load is now too big—so it times out. The only way out is to trim the model, make the queries more efficient, be sure incremental refresh is actually folding, and push heavy work back to the source. If the data keeps growing, a Pro license will struggle no matter what, and you may eventually need PPU or a proper data warehouse feeding Power BI.
thanks for your answer.
First of all all incremental refresh is working fine. When the historic data came and its gotten worse.
we do have warehouse and im actually getting a pre-agergatted datas so it cant be lower anymore if its lowered from this the stakeholders cant see what they want. (Its because they want it by year comparision, month comparision and even the day of months thats why the the data would be large btw its retail company)
Im wondering when change modeling or add table if needed how to not reload all datas only model architecture change. Does it only available in Premium or Can be done in pro ?
Im confused am i doing it wrong or is because of the license.