What's considered as a query in PowerBI Datasets on Direct Query mode?

[julsr]

Hello Everyone!

I'm using a Direct Query connection (Power BI Dataset in Direct Query mode) to my Databricks Serverless account, which is activated when it receives a query and bills us for this. To ensure the pricing, I want to understand when a query is sent to Databricks. Are these options valid?:

• When the scheduled refresh is performed in the PowerBI Dataset?
• When some user opens a PowerBI report linked to the Direct Query Dataset (updated once per day)?
• When the users change the filters to the report linked to the Direct Query Dataset (updated once per day)?

If there are more cases, it would be appreciated to know about them

Thanks

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @julsr 

What I would say is that everytime a user interacts with the Power BI Report it will run a query. So if the user then clicks on a bar in a table that will also send a query. And there is a potential for multiple queries to be sent per user interaction with the Power BI Report.

I would strongly suggest testing this yourself to see how many queries are actually generated when you use the Power BI Reports?

[julsr]

Thanks for your reply. I thought it would only be when the scheduled refresh is submitted, but if it's sent each time a user interacts with the report, it'll be a lot of times. Di you know how could I test it?

[GilbertQ]

Hi @julsr 

You can create the directQuery for your Power BI Report to databricks. Then interact with some reports.

You should be able to monitor the queries on your databricks solution. Which you can determine how many queries are being run.

[julsr]

Great, thanks! Did you get this information from PowerBI documentation? Could you share it with me, please? I want to investigate further on this.

Thanks

[GilbertQ]

Hi @julsr 

I have looked at the DirectQuery documentation in the past which details how to view and troubleshoot potential  issues with DirectQuery.

I would recommend that you do a lot of testing. Not only can there be a financial impact when a lot of queries are run on your Databricks  instance. But the Power BI reports could potentially also be very slow for the end users.