PowerBI Embedded direct query caching

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

As the title suggests, we use PowerBI Embedded in direct query mode.  I'm finding that the data is cached.  We have data updates happening every minute in the database.  We can't get the report to show the latest data.   It seems to be possible to set the caching strategy on the O365 offering - but I don't think this is possible in PowerBI Embedded.

Has anyone else found this?  Do you have a solution?  Some kind of Data Refresh button would be ideal.  Can this be spoofed with a slicer and some clever DAX?

Regards chaps

Nick

[Eric_Zhang]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi all,

As the title suggests, we use PowerBI Embedded in direct query mode.  I'm finding that the data is cached.  We have data updates happening every minute in the database.  We can't get the report to show the latest data.   It seems to be possible to set the caching strategy on the O365 offering - but I don't think this is possible in PowerBI Embedded.

Has anyone else found this?  Do you have a solution?  Some kind of Data Refresh button would be ideal.  Can this be spoofed with a slicer and some clever DAX?

Regards chaps 

Nick

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@Anonymous

The only cache regarding DirectQuery that I'm aware is  Custom Cache Refresh Schedules in the Power BI Service. However that cache won't affect the data updating, every time some accesses the report in DirectQuery mode, Power BI just sends query and retrieve latest data. 

The cache in Power BI Embedded is for import mode, see Cached datasets. As to DirectQuery, I don't see any cache machinism.

May I know how did you observe that "the report won't show latest data"? Based on my test, when data updated in my azure sql database, after refresh the embedded report shows the latest data.

[Anonymous]

But how did you 'refresh' your powerbi report?  If I do a full F5 refresh, then the data does refresh.  But consider this example...

Step 1.  Load report - report shows data.

Step 2.  Update some data directly in the database.

Step 3.  Update a filter on report - perhaps a date slicer.  Change date to tomorrow.

Step 4.  The report correctly goes back to database and shows correct latest data.

Step 5.  Move the filter back to what is was in Step1.  The report shows the same data in Step 1 - it must have cached it.

This is pretty bad.  Especially since powerbi does not provide a refresh button we can drop on our reports.  It happens on the matrix too - I can drill down to latest data - but drill back up to cached data.  It's a mess really.