Loading, Transforming, and Refreshing Data

So far, we have focused a lot on performance monitoring and investigation. We have now reached the next phase of our journey into Power BI performance management. Here, we will begin looking at what actions we can take to remedy the performance issues we discovered while using the tools that were introduced in previous chapters. From here on, each chapter will look deeper at a specific area with solutions and guidance.

Loading new data periodically is a critical part of any analytical system and this mainly applies to Import mode for Power BI. Data refreshes and their associated transformations can be some of the most CPU and memory-intensive operations. Reports depend on current data. Failures can cause users to not trust the report data. Large semantic models that occupy a significant portion of a host’s memory, and that have complex data transformations, are more prone to resource contention. Poorly designed transformations contribute...