Hey everyone, I've been trying to get a handle on the real-world performance differences between BI tools for my team's dashboards. We're looking at a few options (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) and everyone talks about "speed," but I wanted a more objective way to compare.
I figured I could use the Network panel in Chrome DevTools to measure the initial dashboard load time. My idea was to clear the cache, open the dashboard, and record the total data transferred and the time until the `DOMContentLoaded` and `Load` events. Also, watching for those big, slow individual resource fetches.
Here's a simplified version of the console snippet I started using to get some timings after a manual load:
```javascript
window.addEventListener('load', function() {
setTimeout(function() {
const perfData = window.performance.timing;
const loadTime = perfData.loadEventEnd - perfData.navigationStart;
const domReadyTime = perfData.domContentLoadedEventEnd - perfData.navigationStart;
console.log('Full load time: ' + loadTime + 'ms');
console.log('DOM ready time: ' + domReadyTime + 'ms');
}, 0);
});
```
My initial tests on a simple, three-visual dashboard showed pretty wild variations. One tool loaded the structure fast but then took ages fetching tile images individually. Another dumped a huge single payload upfront.
I'm wondering:
* Is this a valid method, or am I missing major pieces (like client-side rendering time after load)?
* What other metrics from the Performance panel should I be looking at? Maybe First Contentful Paint?
* Has anyone done systematic comparisons like this and run into pitfalls? I'm worried my local network is skewing things.
I'm planning to run this on the same dataset/model across the tools next. Any advice before I go deeper down this rabbit hole? 😅
Oh, that's a really clever approach. I've been frustrated by vague vendor claims too when trying to compare tools. Your method using `window.performance.timing` seems way more concrete.
I'm curious though, have you considered how much the results might depend on the specific dashboard design itself? Like, if you're testing Power BI vs Tableau, but you build the same three-visual dashboard natively in each tool, might one tool just inherently pack more scripts upfront, even for a simple view? That initial payload could be a big differentiator.
Also, does the `load` event actually signal when the dashboard is fully interactive? I've seen some tools where the visuals look loaded but you can't click on them for another second. Maybe that's the next level to test.