Improving Data Load Speeds with Incremental Refresh
Incremental refresh for semantic models is a feature originally released for Power BI Premium capacities but has become a feature for Pro licenses as well. Note that while incremental refresh for semantic models is now available as a Pro feature, incremental refresh for dataflows is a premium-only feature. Prior to incremental refresh, Power BI only had a single mode of operation when refreshing semantic models: full load. In other words, the existing data in the semantic model was removed and entirely replaced each time the semantic model refreshed. The full load refresh process could take a long time when dealing with large fact tables with millions of rows. Incremental refresh solves this problem by only refreshing new and changed data within the semantic model. Since incremental refresh is relatively new, older semantic models are likely still using the full load process, and thus might benefit from being retrofitted with incremental...