Power BI Incremental Refresh

Hello everyone ! In this post I am going to discuss about incremental refresh. Power BI offers different types of data refreshes to ensure the data in your dashboards up to date. Incremental refresh is ideal for large data models. So let's dive in!

What is Incremental Refresh in Power BI ?
Incremental refresh is a feature in Power BI that lets you to refresh the part of your dataset or else only the data that has changed or had been added since the last refresh date instead of refreshing the entire dataset. As I mentioned earlier this particulary useful for large datasets as it improves effienciency and perforamance needed for refreshing the data also it ideal for datasets with historical data that does not change and new data that is added periodically, such as transactional data or logs. 

How Incremental Refresh works
There are two main components in increemental refresh.

Data Partitioning
Parameters are used for the data partitioning. Namely RangeStart  and RangeEnd.

Refresh Policies
This the where we specify the date range for incremental refresh and archiving. 

Setting Up Incremental Refresh
In this section I am going to step by step guidance to setup incremental refresh.

1. Create parameters - Open your PBI report in Power BI Desktop and Go to the Power Query. Open Manage parameters and create two parameters RangeStart and RangeEnd. Parameter names are case sensitive also should be in Date/Time data type.
   Note: Based on your report requirement you can decide on the date ranges.

2. Filter data - By using created parametrs, now you have to filter the data by applying custom date filter on date column in your table. Data type of the date column also shoud be Date/Time. 

3. Apply Refresh Policy - After loading the above query in to the model, you can apply the refresh policy based on your requirement by clicking on incremental refresh option when you right click on the table.

Now you can incrementally refresh the table. You can publish the report and apply a scheduled refresh also.

What are the best practices for incremental refresh ?
It essential to choose the right partitioning stratergy based on your reporting needs and data. Also test different refresh policies to ensure which refresh policy gives you intended results and monitor perforamance by checking refresh times regularly. 

What are the pros and cons ?
Pros,
- Perforamance
- Reduce resource usage which leads to cost effectiveness
- Enable real time updates
- Set is easy.

Cons,
- Only works with certain data sources
- PBIX file cannot be downloaded after publishing to the service
- Pro models are limited to a maximum refresh duration of 2 hours. 

And that brings us to the end of the blog post! Incremental refresh is a powerful feature in Power BI that enhances data management and reporting efficiency. You've now learned everything you need to know about incremental refresh in Power BI. If you want to learn more refer the official microsoft page here. Happy learning!