Incremental refreshing with nested SPICE datasets

Learning Center Articles
, ,
1

I was recently using the incremental refresh feature with SPICE datasets. These allow periodic refreshing of SPICE datasets based on a date field in the dataset and a window of historical data that is to be refreshed (e.g. the last hour).

When configuring an incremental refresh for a SPICE dataset you can choose from the following refresh frequencies:

  • Every 15 minutes
  • Every 30 minutes
  • Hourly
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly

These are as shown in the QuickSight dialog when configuring an incremental refresh schedule:
image

Please note that it isn’t possible to configure incremental refresh for SPICE datasets that have child datasets.
The following diagram shows the refresh options when adding child datasets to a parent SPICE dataset.
image

When configuring full refreshes, these can run at the following frequencies:

  • Hourly
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly

Here is the QuickSight dialog when configuring a full refresh schedule:
image

However, there is an option to consider if you need to apply incremental refreshes to a “parent” dataset. If you use Custom SQL in place of the child dataset, this results in a single dataset (i.e. no parent/child relationship). Therefore this dataset can be configured for incremental refreshes with all supported refresh frequencies.
image

Which approach you take will depend on your specific use-case and Custom SQL may not be an option. For example, if you were joining multiple child datasets and need to configure different refresh frequencies for each dataset.

I hope this helps when configuring refresh of SPICE datasets in your QuickSight solutions.

Many Thanks,
Andrew

1 Like