What is column pruning and why is it important?

< 1 min read

Column pruning means extracting only required columns instead of full table data.
Power BI requests selected fields from the source during query folding.
In my project, orders table had 60 columns but report needed only 12.
After pruning, dataset size reduced from 3 GB to 600 MB.
Refresh time improved significantly and gateway memory usage dropped.
Less data transfer also improved network performance.
It prevents unnecessary sensitive fields from entering the model.
Helps faster report load and better DAX calculation performance.
We ensured unused columns were removed early in Power Query.
Important for scalability when handling large enterprise datasets.

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