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paulwozniak
Helper I
Helper I

Is the data refresh an atomic operation?

When I share a dashboard with my team, I can set it to show the last refreshed date. 

 

Since the dashboard uses a dataset that has mutiple datasources, a question has come up with regards to what happens when during the refresh the refresh of source A succeeds and the refresh of source B fails. 

 

Is the refresh an atomic operation? Meaning that either all of the data sources successfully refresh, or the refresh fails.

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ashishrj
Power Participant
Power Participant

@paulwozniak  Data Refresh is not an automatic operation unless you are using a direct query source. It will get refreshed based on the time you have set for your pbix file under dataset section. 

As long as you have different files (pbix) uploaded for your report, they are independent of each other for data refresh and refresh of one source might fail without impacting the other. 

By the way nice picture for your profile Smiley Very Happy

@ashishrj Thanks 🙂 You can just upload a .gif

 

I am specifically asking about a single report (pbix file) that has multiple data sources. I am wondering what will happen when a single data source in that report fails during the refresh.

 

Will the refresh for that report fail?

 

For example:

 

- In my report I connect to Google Analytics and Salesforce

- I uploaded the report to Power BI and set the refresh schedule for once every 24 hours

- When the refresh runs, the Salesforce API rejects the request, but the Google Analytics API returns data correctly

@paulwozniak - So, I tested this out with 2 SharePoint lists. After I removed one of the SharePoint lists, data refresh failed and the other query did not update new items in the remaining list. So, my thought is not atomic. Seems like there is some kind of preprocessing step that must do some sort of check prior to running through the queries.

 

O365 Power BI refresh was atomic, but it does not appear that Power BI is.


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Data refresh is atomic because there is one in-memory database for each dataset. When PowerBI processes the database, which is triggered by data refresh, it's done in a single transaction, so you will either not get any new data if refresh fails, or get new data if refresh succeeds. Hope this helps. 

I can't be certain but that shouldn't be too hard to test out, I will probably setup a simple test and try it out. Basically, setup two SharePoint Online lists with a couple columns and a couple rows of data. Import into Desktop via 2 Power Queries. Schedule a refresh and let it refresh and succeed. Add a row to the first list, delete the second list. Let the refresh go again and see.

 

My initial impression is that it will fail, but it may refresh the first list. If it does refresh the first query, it would be interesting trying it where the first list is the second query to see if once it hits an error, does it continue or bomb out?

 

I can say that the ability the schedule a refresh is dependent upon ALL of the queries being "refreshable". For example, I had a query that I ported over that ran SQL code. It wouldn't refresh automagically in old O365 Power BI but it did allow me to schedule a refresh and all of the other queries refreshed automagically but that one had to be refreshed manually. But, in new Power BI, it wouldn't even let me schedule a refresh because that one query was not "refreshable". Not sure that is definitive for your case but I have seen that behavior.


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Instead of a Kudo, please vote for this idea
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External Tools: MSHGQM
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Latest book!:
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DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...

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