Is there a performance difference between hiding dimensions and deleting them entirely? (Community)

View the original community article here

Last tested: May 11, 2020
 

If you don't want to use a given dimension, you have three options:

1. Apply hidden: yes (or exclude the field from a given explore with fields)
2. Comment out the fields in LookML using #
3. Delete the fields from the LookML

Any of these options will help performance in the explore, since they will remove them from the field picker.

Hidden fields still have to be validated, so if you're worried about validation, then choose option 2 or 3. Large comment blocks can have impact on validation times, so option 2 is the most performant.