In the last section of this chapter, we're going to take a look at another way you can optimize your data model, through the use of summary tables. Although the use of summary tables will not necessarily help to reduce the size of your data model in terms of memory usage, they are a great way to improve performance, especially if your data model contains large tables with millions of rows. Any visual that uses a summary table will potentially be much faster than if it were working directly with a larger native table.
There are a couple of ways to create summary tables. If you have access to the source database, then you can create summary tables at the source using SQL views. This has the advantage that, if not needed for analysis, you do not need to import the larger table on which the views are based. If you don't need to import the larger table...