No "historical data" - can we use incremental refresh?

[thisisausername]

Our source system has no concept of 'historical' data - any entry can be updated at any point. We don't have anything like "old data can't change". We do obviously though have a 'LastModifiedDate' field in each table, updated by the system automatically.

Can we still use incremental refresh?

[v-xicai]

Hi @thisisausername ,

If your data changes every time, you may use DirectQuery mode or connect live mode to get real data, and you can choose to use the Incremental refresh or not, while there are some advantages you can considerate using Incremental refresh:

• Refreshes are faster - Only data that has changed needs to be refreshed. For example, refresh only the last five days of a ten-year dataset.
• Refreshes are more reliable - It's no longer necessary to maintain long-running connections to volatile source systems.
• Resource consumption is reduced - Less data to refresh reduces overall consumption of memory and other resources.

You can learn more about the Incremental refresh: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-premium-incremental-refresh.

Best Regards,

Amy

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[thisisausername]

Thanks @v-xicai.

My point was more everything I've read about incremental refresh leads me to believe I need to define a partition of 'historical' data and a partition of data to be in-scope of incremental refresh.

Can both partitions be the same e.g. 6 months for both? (so I load 6 months and do incremental refresh for the same 6 months)