PowerBI Writeback – Performance Issue

[ChrisCBR]

Hello everyone,

I’ve tried the new TTF preview feature, which allows user writeback to fabric tables. I used instructions provided in the following video and article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUQRoR0yz8g

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/translytical-task-flow-overview

The writeback works and I can immediately see the result in the fabric SQL table.

However, one thing that does not work for me is to directly connect to the Fabric SQL database in PowerBI (around minute 9:00 in the video). I can see the tables in PowerBI desktop, but it takes forever and then times out.

I asked our IT – they did not find a direct answer but told me to use a “semantic model” to get the data back to the PowerBI report. This worked. However, it takes over half a minute for the writeback result to be available in the report. I tried different ReportPage refresh options and manually updating the report page. No matter how small I make the use case - it always takes more than half a minute which is less than ideal. Videos and articles suggest the writeback result should be reflected almost immediately in the report.

Can anyone confirm that using a semantic model instead of direct connection to the Fabric SQL database might be the bottleneck? If not, what might be another reason? Or can anyone at least confirm that the writeback result is available almost immediately in their use case?

Thank you!

[v-prasare]

Hi @ChrisCBR,

We would like to confirm if our community members answer resolves your query or if you need further help. If you still have any questions or need more support, please feel free to let us know. We are happy to help you.

Thank you for your patience and look forward to hearing from you.
Best Regards,
Prashanth Are
MS Fabric community support

[ChrisCBR]

Unfortunately the query is not resolved as of now, further help would be much appreciated.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @ChrisCBR 

I can confirm when using write back in fabric you need to have a direct query to the table that you're writebacking to in order to see the results immediately. Otherwise what needs to happen is the data needs to be re imported which is where it is taking the time to show those results.

[ChrisCBR]

Hi,

thank your for your reply!

So am I understanding this correctly: my semantic model is in direct query mode and the option that changes in OneLake are immediately recognized is also selected. But this way PowerBI still needs to reimport the data, it is not the same as a direct query to the table in the database?

[GilbertQ]

Hi @ChrisCBR 

You have your semantic model in Direct query mode, querying back to the same SQL database. You should then see those options change immediately after it is written to the database. Can you confirm that it has successfully written back to the database?

[ChrisCBR]

Yes, I can see the change in the SQL table from the writeback immediately. However, as mentioned, it takes about half a minute in direct query mode until I can see this change in the Power BI report. The workspace has a limit at the moment that report pages automatically refresh every 5 minutes, so I did the page refresh manually. This has no result until about 30-45 seconds. I thought the semantic model might be the performance bottleneck because it is the part where I had to differ from the tutorials. Even though it is in direct query mode also I thought going through the semantic models might add some kind of additional overhead. Any ideas?