Performance Optimization Techniques in Power BI
Introduction
Building efficient Power BI reports can be challenging, especially when working with large datasets. One common issue Power BI users encounter is the “stack overflow” error, which can disrupt the report-building process. I
In this blog I will share some performance optimization techniques that you can use in building power BI report.
When using power query or importing data you might have got this error –
“Expression.Error: Evaluation resulted in a stack overflow and cannot continue.”
This error occurs when there’s a large amount of data is being imported or not enough memory available memory available for Power BI to complete the operation.
This issue can be resolved by increasing the Memory and CPU cores that can be used by Power BI while querying or evaluations.
There are two settings that we need to keep in mind –
- Maximum number of simultaneous evaluations
- Maximum memory used per simultaneous evaluation
By default, the maximum number of simultaneous evaluations is equal to the number of logical CPU cores on the machine and Maximum memory used per simultaneous evaluation is 432 MB.
Personally, I have kept these values in between or close to maximum value depending on my requirement and system.
Also, here is link to recommendations by Microsoft for managing Power BI workload and evaluation configurations –
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-evaluation-configuration
Conclusion
Optimizing performance in Power BI is crucial for handling large datasets and preventing issues like the “stack overflow” error. By adjusting settings for simultaneous evaluations and memory allocation, you can significantly improve report processing and responsiveness.
We hope you found this article useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at [email protected]
