What is SPICE and when would you use direct query instead?

SPICE is QuickSight's in-memory columnar engine. A dataset in SPICE is a compressed copy that QuickSight queries directly, which is fast, isolates load from production databases, and scales to many concurrent readers.

Direct query passes each visual's request straight to the source. Data is always current and no SPICE capacity is used, but performance depends entirely on the source and every dashboard view generates queries — which on Athena or Redshift means real cost.

Use direct query when data must be current to the minute or the volume cannot be held economically in SPICE. Otherwise SPICE with a scheduled or API-triggered refresh is the default.