Performance · 8 min read
Making dashboards fast without rewriting everything
Four unglamorous changes that took a report from three seconds to under one.
By Priya Raman ·
Slow dashboards are rarely slow because of one terrible query. They are slow because of a dozen small decisions that each seemed reasonable at the time.
Measure the whole journey
Start with real timings from real users: time to first byte, time to first chart, time to interactive. Averages hide pain, so look at the 95th percentile.
Pre-aggregate the boring stuff
If a number is requested hundreds of times a day, compute it once. Materialised views and small summary tables are dull, reliable and wonderfully fast.
Stream, don’t wait
Send the first chart as soon as it is ready instead of holding the page hostage for the slowest query. Perceived speed matters as much as measured speed.
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