Azure Analysis Services Partitions and Query Performance

Question

From what I understand, partitions in Azure Analysis Services do not dramatically improve Direct Query performance.

Is that correct?

Answer 1

Hi @james.h.robinson.csm@gmail.com ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform. Thanks for posting the query.

Major benefit of partitions in Analysis services is to enable parallel processing and hence reduce the overall time to refresh the data. In direct query, there is only one partition among multiple partitions that can be used for query execution as in below snap and documentation. There can be scenarios where this might benefit query performance in direct query mode as well. For Example, if we are pulling a certain year/version of data in a report that belongs to a single partition, we can leverage that partition for the query execution that will reduce the processing time as the dataset size is reduced. If no partition is specified, it will process entire data from data source.

As per my understanding, partition might still benefit query performance in direct query mode based on feasibility of requirement.

Hope this helps! Please let us know for further queries and we will be glad to assist.