We have various SQL jobs for processing SSAS tabular models. Each job is executed daily, with an interval of the half hour from the previous one.
Currently, we are using the Full Process mode, which consumes a lot of memory and causes some jobs to fail.
Thus, We need to understand how other processing modes work in SSAS Tabular.
Do Process Data and process default modes update existing data, or only insert new ones?
Process default checks the process state of the object(s) you select for processing and brings them up to a fully processed state. Will rebuild empty data tables or partitions, relationships and hierarchies. The difference between Process Full and Process Default is that Full will drop data, hierarchies and relationships first and the reprocess, Default will just bring them up to date. NB: Default will not process data in an object if data is already there, even if you know it is incomplete.
Process Data will process all the data from the data source but will not process relationships and hierarchies. If you only ever want to process some of the data in your ETL, then you should look at partitioning your data and just processing the partitions. There is no 'merge' aspect to Process Data.