How do you optimise filters?

[blue1]

Here is the situation:

• We have a very large model as customer would like to join basically all existing tables together.
• As with all models, there is a root table that all other tables join to through a tree of connections.

The problem comes when I set up filters for a dimension in a table that isn't root on this explorer. In order to extract a distinct list for the dimension in question, Looker will generate an SQL that parses from the root table all the way to the table in question. This is very inefficient.

I can think of a solution where you would set up an Explore for each and every table in the instance and use those for Filters, but that seems very tedious to set up and to maintain.

Has anyone else struggled with this issue and has a clever solution or any ideas at all?

Thanks, Blue