Set separately on each table of a Power BI semantic model: Import copies data in, DirectQuery asks the source at query time, Direct Lake reads Delta tables in OneLake directly, and Dual can work either way.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Storage mode in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Set
Secret permission in Key Vault for writing secrets; some older material refers to it as Create.
- Event
Table in Log Analytics where entries from Windows event logs are kept.
- Power BI
Microsoft's analytics and reporting service. It reaches data held on-premises through the on-premises data gateway.
- Semantic model
Sometimes called an OLAP model, this Power BI and Fabric layer defines the measures, hierarchies, tables and relationships that reports and dashboards query; star schema design is the usual pattern.
- DirectQuery
Power BI connection mode in which reports fetch data from the source in real time; Direct Lake outperforms it.
- Direct Lake
Mode for Fabric semantic models that loads Delta or Parquet files from OneLake straight into VertiPaq, giving almost import-level performance without duplicating data.
- OneLake
Built on Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, it is the one logical data lake for an entire Microsoft Fabric tenant, provisioned automatically, and the place where every Fabric workload keeps its data.
Related terms
- Import mode
Copies data into the model's in-memory cache, so a refresh is needed before changes appear. It is Power BI's most used storage mode and what a new Power BI Desktop solution starts with.
- Model view
Where Power BI Desktop users see every table, column and relationship in the model at once, draw new relationships, set up hierarchies and adjust table settings like storage mode.