Using Small Multiples In Power BI To Improve Report Performance

While the long-awaited small multiples feature that previewed in the December 2020 release is an obvious boost to Power BI’s data visualisation capabilities, did you know that you can use it to improve report performance too?

Earlier this year I wrote blog posts showing how you can improve report performance by showing the same amount of data in fewer visuals (for example by replacing several cards with a single table) and how the number of visuals on a page affects report performance even if they aren’t displaying any data; several other people have written similar posts too. Small multiples are just another way you can replace several visuals with a single visual that displays the same data.

To illustrate, consider the following report with five separate line chart visuals on it that are identical apart from the fact that there is a different filter set on each one:

Here’s what Performance Analyzer shows when the page is refreshed:

In this case everything is fairly quick, but notice that each DAX query takes 10-12ms and by the time we have reached the “Count Of Sales by Date for Terraced” visual the total render duration has reached 710ms.

Now, here’s the same data in a single line chart visual using small multiples:

It’s the same data and the same charts, but look at what Performance Analyzer shows now:

There are two things to point out:

1. There is only one DAX query which, at 12ms, performs about the same as each of the five DAX queries in the previous version of the report. In this case by requesting all the data in a single query, rather than five separate queries, Power BI has been able to optimise how it retieves the data it needs. This doesn’t mean that from a DAX point of view that the small multiples version of the report is five times faster than the original because Power BI will have run the five queries in parallel in that version, but in general you will see some improvement in overall performance from this consolidation of queries and in some cases this can be quite significant.
2. While the sum of the visual display durations for each of the separate visuals is basically the same as the visual display duration for the small multiples visual – which makes sense because they display the same data in the same way – the total duration of the small multiples visual is 486ms compared to 710ms for the total duration of the Count Of Sales by Date for Terraced visual in the original version, so there has been a definite overall improvement in rendering time. In fact, Performance Analyzer doesn’t really give you an accurate way of measuring the overall time taken to render a report page. A much better technique is the one I blogged about here, and this suggests the overall performance saving from using small multiples is almost 500ms.

In conclusion, then, if you have any groups of visuals on your reports that can be replaced by a single small multiples visual then I recommend that you do so – you may see an improvement in performance as a result. Remember also that it’s still early days for small multiples: as more and more features are added to it, and as more and more visuals support small multiples, the more opportunity you will have to consolidate visuals.