Question

You maintain a Direct Lake semantic model over a lakehouse that holds a 4-billion-row Sales fact table refreshed hourly. Business users also need to compare against a small, static PriorYearBudget table that is maintained manually in an Excel file and is not stored in the lakehouse. You must keep the large Sales table on Direct Lake for freshness and scale, while still bringing in the budget data without moving it into the lakehouse. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Add the PriorYearBudget table as an Import table, creating a composite model that keeps Sales in Direct Lake mode.

Answer

Convert the entire model to Import mode and load both Sales and PriorYearBudget from their sources.

Answer

Create a shortcut to the Excel file in the lakehouse and add PriorYearBudget as a Direct Lake table.

Answer

Set the PriorYearBudget table to DirectQuery against the Excel file while leaving Sales in Direct Lake mode.