Chris Webb looks in on things:
Something I do all the time when performance tuning Power BI is use SQL Server Profiler to monitor query and refresh activity. There’s a handy external tool that lets you open up Profiler with a connection to Power BI Desktop; if you’re using Power BI Premium you can also connect Profiler up to a published dataset using the XMLA Endpoint. Profiler is a bit old-school though and likely to lead to snarky comments from SQL Server DBAs (it’s not deprecated for Analysis Services though!) who’ll say you should be using Extended Events (aka xEvents) instead. And guess what – did you know you can use Analysis Services xEvents to monitor activity in Power BI Desktop?
It’s the power of Extended Events.