Arcade expressions - does tighter code give better performance on AGOL?

Question

Has anyone tested Arcade's performance with tight vs more verbose expressions? For example, here is an expression I wrote to count the number of accidents that occurred within 150 feet of a road centerline:

Count(Intersects((FeatureSetByName($map, "Accident"), Buffer($feature, 150, "feet")))

A more verbose way to get the same result might be:

var accidents = FeatureSetByName($map, "Accident")
var roadBuffer = Buffer($feature, 150, 'feet')
var roadAccidentIntersects = Intersects(accidents, roadBuffer)
var countAccidents = Count(roadAccidentIntersects)
return countAccidents

Does anyone know if one expression would perform better than the other in an AGOL pop-up? I've definitely noticed that the more you click on features in a map with spatial analysis, the faster the browser gets at calculating the results. I'm just wondering if there is an advantage to writing tight code as opposed to more readable code.

XanderBakker · Accepted Answer

Hi @AmyRoust ,

Some time ago I read that it is more performant to have multiple functions on the same line since this would reduce the number of requests to the server. This is something Paul Barker mentioned in his blog: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/mapping/mapping/whats-new-with-arcade-taking-a-stroll-through-featuresets-part-2/

On the other hand, I have never been able to confirm this.

CC: @HusseinNasser2

AmyRoust · Accepted Answer

The answer is embedded in that article that you referenced. Specifically, "Because of that lazy execution and chaining, the following two expressions are identical, and will have the same performance with respect to query execution:" The two expressions that follow are nearly identical to what I posted. Thank you - that was an interesting article.