What is filtering at source vs filtering at report level?

< 1 min read

Filtering at source means applying conditions directly in the database query before loading data.
In one project, we filtered only the last 12 months of sales in the SQL view itself.
This reduced data volume and improved refresh performance.
Filtering at report level means loading full dataset and then applying filters in Power BI.
This gives flexibility for analysis but increases memory and processing load.
For large fact tables, source-level filtering is more efficient.
Report-level filtering is suitable for small datasets or interactive slicing.
So source filtering improves performance, while report filtering improves flexibility.

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