Performance using Labels or Column() in charts

If I have a chart that calculates Total Sales: Sum(Sales), and Total Costs: Sum(CostPrice*Quantity), then I have 3 options to calculate the Total Margin:

Option 1:  I can just use the same expressions in full:

Sum(Sales) - Sum(CostPrice*Quantity)

Option 2:  I can reference the column values using the Column() function:

Column(1)-Column(2)

Option 3: I can reference the labels of the first expressions:

[Total Sales] - [Total Costs]

Now, someone once said to me that the last option, although it might appear to be the best because you are re-using existing values, actually calculates slower than the others.  I have often wondered if that was true.  Someone else suggested to me recently that the 2nd option actually performs quicker.  I decided that I should find out!

Buried deep in the Document Properties of a QVW, on the Sheets tab, there is a list of all the objects on the sheet along with their last calculation time (CalcTime) in milliseconds.  If you looked at this for one of your charts, you might find that it says "0".  This is because the last calculation might have been from cached data so the only accurate CalcTime is when the chart is first initialized in QlikView or when the first of a particular set of selections are made in a recently opened document - where the cache has not been established yet.

So, what I did was to take a document with about 5,000,000 sales transaction rows and build a simple Straight Table of Sales / Costs / Margin by Country.  I made 3 copies of this document, each copy making the Margin calculation in one of the above ways.  The only object in each document is the straight table.

I then completely closed QlikView.  I opened one of the documents, recorded the "Initialize" CalcTime for the chart, made a selection of 2 countries (UK and USA) and recorded the "Selection" CalcTime for the chart.  Then I shut down QlikView again and repeated.  I did this 8 times for each of the documents, opening them in random order.

Here are the results:

	Option 1		Option 2		Option 3
	Initialize	Select	Initialize	Select	Initialize	Select
	219	125	219	125	219	125
	250	140	250	125	202	125
	234	125	265	156	203	124
	218	125	219	125	218	125
	250	125	218	141	218	140
	219	125	281	156	250	156
	234	141	218	141	219	140
	219	125	218	125	297	141
Mean	230.4	128.9	236.0	136.8	228.3	134.5
Mode	219.0	125.0	218.0	125.0	219.0	125.0
Median	226.5	125.0	219.0	133.0	218.5	132.5

There is some slight differences.  But, statistically, I would have to say that there is no real difference between the 3 options!

One thing that I would say is that I don't like using the Column() function in a Straight Table.  This is because the user may have the option to swap columns around and that would invalidate the expression.  Other than that, it appears that you can just use whatever option you like and it won't make any difference to QlikView performance.

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Stephen Redmond is CTO of CapricornVentis a QlikView Elite Partner. We are always looking for the right people to join our team.
Follow me on Twitter: @stephencredmond