There can be various reasons for performance issues or slowness in a Spotfire analysis or dashboard. Below are a few basic suggestions which could be implemented to improve performance.
- Database denormalization: In most production databases, the tables are likely to be normalized. When such databases are used for reporting, the dashboard has to traverse across multiple tables to render the visualization, slowing down the time to render. In such cases, verify whether de-normalization of data tables is a possibility. De-normalization ensures that the query fired by the dashboard goes against one table, fetching all the required elements in one go.
- Database performance optimization: Check if any database optimization (Partitioning, Indexing etc.) could help to improve the query execution time.
- Minimize the amount of data imported into Spotfire: Try to remove unwanted data and columns, calculated columns, use aggregated calculations at the back end, if possible, and check the joins in the tables. Try to minimize the number of records fetched. Use exact filters to keep only the required data.
- Use Scheduled Updates: If the dashboard is mostly displayed on the web, Scheduled Update functionality can be used to cache the data on the server. It will then be available in Spotfire Web Player memory and will load much faster.
- Consider using In-DB data: This way the data will be kept in the database, instead of getting fetched into memory, and data aggregation operations will be passed to the database, which means less data to be transferred to Spotfire.
Keeping in mind these suggestions while creating a dashboard will aid in improving final dashboard performance. Also, improvements in the end-to-end reporting workflow and underlying data model should be considered for fully optimized performance.
Additional resources:
Spotfire Performance and Optimization webinar: http://youtu.be/Hfrt9Z-YMjQ
Performance Troubleshooting (Spotfire Server Administration guide): https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/latest/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/server/topics/performance_troubleshooting.html