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Monitor report performance in Power BI Desktop using the Performance Analyzer. Monitoring will help you learn where the bottlenecks are, and how you can improve report performance.
Monitoring performance is relevant in the following situations:
Slow queries or report visuals should be a focal point of continued optimization.
Note
The Performance Analyzer cannot be used to monitor Premium Per User (PPU) activities or capacity.
Use Query Diagnostics in Power BI Desktop to determine what Power Query is doing when previewing or applying queries. Further, use the Diagnose Step function to record detailed evaluation information for each query step. The results are made available in a Power Query, and you can apply transformations to better understand query execution.
Use Performance Analyzer in Power BI Desktop to find out how each of your report elements—such as visuals and DAX formulas—are doing. It's especially useful to determine whether it's the query or visual rendering that's contributing to performance issues.
You can also use SQL Server Profiler to identify queries that are slow.
Note
SQL Server Profiler is available as part of SQL Server Management Studio.
Use SQL Server Profiler when your data source is either:
Caution
Power BI Desktop supports connecting to a diagnostics port. The diagnostic port allows for other tools to make connections to perform traces for diagnostic purposes. Making any changes to the Power Desktop data model is supported only for specific operations. Other changes to the data model with operations that aren't supported may lead to corruption and data loss.
To create a SQL Server Profiler trace, follow these instructions:
netstat -b -n
The output will be a list of applications and their open ports. Look for the port used by msmdsrv.exe, and record it for later use. It's your instance of Power BI Desktop.A benefit of using SQL Server Profiler is that it's possible to save a SQL Server (relational) database trace. The trace can become an input to the Database Engine Tuning Advisor. This way, you can receive recommendations on how to tune your data source.
Monitor performance of content deployed into your organization's Power BI Premium capacity with the help of the Fabric Capacity Metrics app.
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Events
Mar 31, 11 PM - Apr 2, 11 PM
The ultimate Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SQL, and AI community-led event. March 31 to April 2, 2025.
Register todayTraining
Module
Use tools to optimize Power BI performance - Training
Use tools to optimize Power BI performance
Certification
Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate - Certifications
Demonstrate methods and best practices that align with business and technical requirements for modeling, visualizing, and analyzing data with Microsoft Power BI.