Summary
This technical report presents an analysis of the TPC-DS Benchmark for Power BI/Direct Lake, focusing on Microsoft's claims regarding the performance and scalability of its Direct Lake architecture within the Microsoft Fabric environment. The report outlines the purpose of the study, which is to evaluate whether Power BI/Direct Lake can serve as a viable alternative to traditional Import Mode and DirectQuery methods for delivering performant queries at enterprise data scale. It investigates three key questions: the suitability of Power BI/Direct Lake for large-scale data queries, its financial viability for organizations of varying sizes, and its effectiveness as a lakehouse platform. The methodology section details the TPC-DS benchmark, a recognized standard for assessing data processing systems, and describes the testing configurations and data schema used. Key findings reveal insights into the performance characteristics of Power BI/Direct Lake, including its limitations and advantages in handling large datasets and concurrent queries. The report concludes with considerations for organizations evaluating this architecture for their business intelligence needs.
