Does Incremental refresh reduce requests to the server ?

[Mornagli]

I work with data source that generlly not supporting folding, I made some changes in the Power BI as in this video:

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

And now i can folding and use Incremental refresh, my question is:

Does it reduce the http request that BI send to my data source ?

I have some large tables that the data source unable to send them all to the MPBI, If i will use Incremental refrshh after the first pull of the large tables - it will reduce the amount of requests for the server ?

(e.g in the table i have data of the last 4 years, if i will use incremntal refresh to get only new data from the last X days, will is send an requests to the data source only for the last X days ?)

Thank you.

[v-yiruan-msft]

Hi @Mornagli ,

After publishing to Service, you perform an initial refresh operation on the dataset. The initial refresh operation can take quite a while to complete. Partitions must be created, historical data loaded, objects such as relationships and hierarchies are built or rebuilt, and calculated objects are recalculated. The first refresh will load both new and updated data in the refresh period as well historical data for the entire store period. Depending on the amount of data, this can take quite a long time. Subsequent refreshes, either manual or scheduled are typically much faster because the incremental refresh policy is applied and only data for the period specified in the refresh policy setting is refreshed. An effective incremental refresh policy not only reduces the amount of data processed with a refresh operation, but also reduces the amount of unnecessary historical data stored in your dataset. Less data to refresh reduces overall consumption of memory and other resources in both Power BI and data source systems.

Incremental refresh for datasets

Best Regards

[amitchandak]

@Mornagli , No sure I got it completely.

The incremental load will query fewer data from your source. This will reduce overall processing for CPU, ram, network etc. But for that you should have small duration for incremental

[Mornagli]

Hi i try to reduce the requests that MPBI will send to my data source(mainly because my DS cand end back large amount of data), Is incremental refresh will reduce the amount of requests that MPBI will send each refresh ? or all the proccess will happend in my DS ?