Power BI adds Direct Lake to eliminate scheduled data refreshes
Microsoft has released Direct Lake connectivity for Power BI within the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem. The update allows the reporting engine to run DAX formulas directly against data stored in OneLake without needing to import it first. Users previously had to choose between importing data for fast performance or using DirectQuery for live updates, which often resulted in slow visuals. Direct Lake combines both, delivering the speed of imported data with real time access. The feature relies on Delta Parquet files, a specific type of compressed data format used in OneLake. It requires an active Microsoft Fabric capacity to function.
Until now, building a dashboard meant managing a fragile pipeline of scheduled data imports. If you inherited a report with hundreds of Power Query steps, a single morning refresh could lock up your system for hours. Analysts were trapped choosing between stale data that loaded quickly or live data that made executives wait 15 seconds every time they clicked a filter. Direct Lake changes how data reaches your visuals by removing the import step entirely. Because Power BI now reads the raw files directly at high speed, the concept of scheduling a data refresh becomes obsolete. This shifts the heavy lifting away from your local machine and onto the server, meaning your reports load instantly regardless of how much data sits behind them.
Analysis
Fabric is no longer just an IT buzzword. It is your escape route from four hour data refreshes. If your company is adopting Microsoft Fabric, stop trying to fix broken data pipelines in Power BI Desktop and tell your IT department to drop the raw data into OneLake so you can connect via Direct Lake.
Citation
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