When optimizing caching for Tableau Server to improve dashboard performance, which setting is most effective to adjust?

The most effective caching strategy involves balancing data freshness with performance. Configuring the cache's Time-To-Live (TTL) policy to align with data refresh schedules ensures that users benefit from cached vizzes without viewing stale data. This is managed via the tsm data-access caching set command. Setting a value like 'low' or a specific timeout configures Tableau Server to reuse cached data as much as possible, reducing the load on the database and speeding up dashboard rendering for frequently accessed views. This is a direct and impactful configuration adjustment for performance optimization.

A. Refreshing the cache on every load negates the performance benefit of caching and is equivalent to querying the live data source each time.

C. Disabling caching entirely would severely degrade performance by forcing all user requests to query the underlying database directly, increasing load and latency.

D. Increasing RAM is a hardware upgrade, not a setting adjustment. While it supports a larger cache, it doesn't optimize the caching behavior itself.

1. Tableau Server Documentation. (2023). Configure Data Cache. Tableau Help. Retrieved from https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/configcache.htm. (This document explains the tsm data-access caching set command and the options for balancing freshness and performance).

2. Tableau Server Documentation. (2023). Performance Tuning. Tableau Help. Retrieved from https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/perftuning.htm. (This guide discusses caching as a key component of server performance tuning).