What is incremental refresh transformation logic?

Parthiban Kannan

Updated on February 11, 2026

< 1 min read

Incremental refresh means only new or changed data is processed instead of refreshing full history.
I create RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters and filter the date column using them.
Power BI then partitions data — old data stays static, only recent period refreshes.
Example: Sales table 5 years history → refresh only last 3 days daily.
This reduces refresh time from 40 mins to about 5 mins in my project.
Important: filter must be on a source date column to support query folding.
I avoid calculated date columns because they break incremental refresh logic.
Used mainly for large fact tables like transactions or logs.
Goal is faster refresh and lower database load.