Table.Buffer in Power BI Service

[JulianS]

Hi everyone,

can anyone help me out with some information about the Table.Buffer function in the power bi service?

I have quite a huge import based on web services returning CSV data when requested.

Those imports are often referenced again by other imports and joined together to build new tables.

For the basic tables, i use the following import structure:

1. only Web.Contents(...

2.

• Use Source from #1
• Table.Buffer(Csv.Document...

3. 

• Use source from #2 
• start actual transformations on the data

I can check on my server log how many CSV requests are being made.

On the desktop the data refresh is working fine with this concept and i get 33 different requests per import as i would expect.

Now when this Dataset is transferred to Power BI Service and a refresh is scheduled, i can see a total amount of 232 requests were made.

Often this is too much load and requests take long, which leads to timeouts.

Does the service ignore Table.Buffer?

How can i adress this issue?

[v-shex-msft]

Hi @JulianS,

Actually table.buffer function will cache table to memory to increase calculation performance, I don't think it will be works for refresh operation on power bi service.

You can also submit a ticket to contact to power bi team to confirm this scenario.

submit a support ticket

Regards,
Xiaoxin Sheng

[JulianS]

Hi @v-shex-msft,

right now i would be interested in how and why this behaviour is different in service and Desktop so i can plan the import for other customers differently.

Any help would be appreciated. 

The only workaround i can think of right now, would be to create a automatic daily export transfer of the CSV files from the API to Sharepoint (or other folder) and import from that source.

[Anonymous]

Hi Julian,

Just wondering if this was ever resolved and if not are you able to give me a preview of how your workaround is constructed because I'm trying to do a table buffer in powerbi service as well through a dataflow but is giving me an error