A developer wants to use DAX Studio to analyze a slow measure. After capturing a server timing trace, they see high ‘Storage Engine’ time. What does this typically indicate?

Question

Power BI — Hard

A developer wants to use DAX Studio to analyze a slow measure. After capturing a server timing trace, they see high ‘Storage Engine’ time. What does this typically indicate?

Accepted Answer

High 'Storage Engine' time in a server timing trace typically indicates that the query is retrieving large volumes of data. This suggests the model's compressed columnar storage is being heavily utilized, often due to high-cardinality columns or insufficient aggregations. Incorrect options, such as excessive Formula Engine recomputation or join overhead, do not directly relate to Storage Engine time.