Performance Recommendations

Space Optimizations

Managing Variables Types

 Birst allows to create custom Variables in the Admin UI at the space level. Custom
Variables can be the result of a query or constant expressions, single or multi
valued. Variables can be :
 Session Variables (session Overwrite = Yes) : the query or expression will be
executed each time a user connects to the space to initialize the variable
 Repository Variables (session Overwrite = No) : the query or expression will
be executed just once, after each space processing.

 If your variable doesn’t need to be refreshed between two space processing (example :
variable extracts current year or relative date), always define it as a Repository
Variable to avoid the query execution each time a user connects to the Space :

 Single Value Variables : You can use the TOP 1 keyword in order to optimize the
underlying database query, even if your query will only retrieve one row.

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 Performance Recommendations

End User Mashup Spaces

 Birst allows to import data in Visualizer using the “Import Data” feature : It was
the legacy datamashup feature before Pronto. When used in a regular parent Birst
space, this Import Data feature will implicitely create a child end user mashup space
with the “(imported data)” name suffix. Ex :
 I am using “Intel Digital Finance” space, in Visualizer I use the import data
feature to import local Excel data and join them to current space.
 An end user mashup space “Intel Digital Finance (imported data)” is created

 In some cases, when some inconsistencies are detected between the mashup space
and the main parent Birst space, it can result with additional slowness when opening
the main parent space, even if not using the mashup feature in Visualizer.

 If datamashup feature is not used any more, ask the user to delete the mashup space
suffixed with “(imported data)”, or fix every structure inconsistency.

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 Performance Recommendations

Subject Area Translation settings

 This visualizer option allows to assign variables to different subject areas in order
to manage translations of semantic layer
(see https://app2102.eu1.birst.com/Help/Full/t_viz/localization_bus_trans.htm)

 You need to ensure you didn’t set a variable by mistake on the association screen,
or it could add some delay when opening the space and dashboards.

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 Performance Recommendations

Images storage and display in Dashboards

 When applicable, you should store the images displayed on the dashboards on a
dedicated web site :
 Images stored in Birst are dynamically generated and downloaded from
the client, they will never be cached by the browser
 Storing images on a dedicated AWS instance works and is easy, images
will be cached by the browser but overall performance will be slow
 Ideally, use a Content Delivery Network with high performance to store
the images

 HTML Dashlet : If you need to display multiple images on a same dashboard page (ex
: links to dashboards), you will get better performance by creating one single HTML
Dashlet that will display the images instead of multiple single dashlets (one dashlet per
image)
 It will require short HTML skills to maintain
 HTML offers nice rendering options, including dynamic and visual effects
 Nice displaying performance can be obtained compared to multiple birst
dashlets (several seconds, depending on # of images)