Forum Discussion

smpa01's avatar
smpa01
Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion
6 months ago
Solved

Power BI dual Storgae Mode question

I’m working through a design decision related to Dual storage mode and how it interacts with DirectQuery models - specifically around the requirement to Mark as Date Table. Since a Date table cann...
  • smpa01's avatar
    6 months ago

    Thanks for taking the time to respond.

     

    I want to clarify what I was actually asking, because the question wasn’t about how to build a Date table or whether it should be DirectQuery or Import.

     

    My question is specifically about refresh behavior in a mixed (Dual + DirectQuery) storage model.

    To restate it clearly:

    • In a Dual model where one table is Import and all other tables are DirectQuery,
    • And where I do not care whether the Import table (Calendar) ever refreshes,
    • Do I still need to configure an explicit refresh schedule in order for the DirectQuery tables to continue returning up‑to‑date data and for downstream reports to reflect real‑time results?

    I’ve now tested this myself, and the behavior is:

    • Even with a Importl table present,
    • And without any scheduled refresh configured,
    • The DirectQuery tables continue to return live data, (which is simply amazing)
    • And downstream reports do update correctly based on the DQ sources.

    So the presence of an Import table does not force the dataset to require a refresh schedule for DirectQuery to keep working.

    In the future, I’d really appreciate answers that address the question directly rather than reframing it into a different problem (the classic XY problem). I wasn’t asking how to build a Date table - I was asking about the refresh implications of Dual storage mode.

    Thanks again.