Microsoft Fabric adds API to run Power Query automatically
Microsoft has released a public REST API for Fabric that allows users to run Power Query M scripts programmatically. The Evaluate Power Query API connects to more than 100 data sources and integrates directly with data engineering tools like Spark and automated pipelines. The tool is currently in preview and comes with a strict limitation: a 90-second execution timeout. This means any data transformation script sent through the API must finish processing in under a minute and a half, or the request will fail.
Until now, running Power Query meant clicking refresh in the Power BI desktop app or relying on rigid scheduled workspace refreshes. Analysts often built massive, undocumented transformation sequences that took hours to churn through messy Excel files on shared drives, entirely isolated from the rest of a company's automated systems. This update turns Power Query from a manual desktop tool into a programmable service that other applications can trigger on demand. However, the strict 90-second cutoff signals a permanent shift in how Microsoft expects you to handle data: slow, bloated queries are no longer acceptable if you want your reports to survive in an automated environment.
Analysis
Fabric is coming, and it has no patience for your inherited four-hour refresh cycles. Stop treating Power Query like an Excel macro recorder that just stacks steps indefinitely. Open your slowest Power BI report today, check the applied steps, and identify where query folding breaks so you can push that heavy transformation work back to the source system.
Citation
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