Using Power BI to create tables with many columns

[DebbieE]

Im looking into someones reports and why they are running so slowly. All the pages seem to just have tables on them with lots of columns. Im not seeing the usual bar and column charts where maybe I would drill down to a more detailed chart.

It feels like they arent using Power BI in the way its been intended but I want to be able to word this in a good way.

What would yor say If a report you were looking at consisted of just tables with many many columns?

[mhossain · Accepted solution]

Hello @DebbieE 

It's ok if we use only tables in the report, table is always enderestimated visuals, but it gives great performance and solves the purpose. I have seen some projects where only tables were required and it solved the purpose very well 🙂

Regarding slowness, it's hard to say without looking at the files, but as per your explanation, so many columns, measures are not well optimized, and most importantly data model design can be the major factor for slowness.

[collinq · Accepted solution]

HI @DebbieE ,

I would think that only putting tables is not really using the "power" of Power BI.  I wouldn't say it is necessarily wrong and I wouldn't think that the slowness is related to the types of visuals. 

They may have something that has a "difficult" link and it takes a long time to render - like they are using two or more fields in the visual that have multiple hops through relationships before they can be displayed.  That is less common though. 

My thinking is to find where the slowness is coming - is it in the retreival of the data?  Or, is it in the Power Query where they did some interesting things?  Or, is it in rendering tables with lots and lots of columns that have relationships that have multiple hops through the relationships?

[mhossain · Accepted solution]

Hello @DebbieE 

It's ok if we use only tables in the report, table is always enderestimated visuals, but it gives great performance and solves the purpose. I have seen some projects where only tables were required and it solved the purpose very well 🙂

Regarding slowness, it's hard to say without looking at the files, but as per your explanation, so many columns, measures are not well optimized, and most importantly data model design can be the major factor for slowness.

[DebbieE]

I think in this case its the model and they need to focus on that model. Ive mentioned that tables arent taking full advantage of the tabular model and may be slower which is another reason to get that model right