Hi Gliders,
So, for the launch of the new glide tables, I’ve decided to take a challenge and build a complete full complex app based on glide abilities only, i.e. not using the GS abilities at all and in fact, if possible I could have built the app without connecting a GS altogether. According to the glide team this will be possible in the future.
The app I decided to build was an app that manages, tracks and measures the working time for customer per customer and project. I chose this due to complexity of calculations of the dates as well as SUMs of data per month and accumulative etc (spoiler alert, this part turnout to be easier in glide).
For those of you which want to view, i prepared a clip of the app
Find below my impression from the glide tables:
Advantages:
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The app itself works much faster (much much faster!!!) - as all calculations are done within glide and nothing is written to the GS there is no delay at all, everything is instant - great user experience! - go to the app and play with it, you’ll feel the difference.
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Dates calculation turns much easier - the new date math column makes calculation between dates much easier. It calculates in days but easy enough to change to hours and min (multiply by 24 for hours and then 6- for minutes),
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Edits not being counted against the limit.
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Once you get used to relations and lookups it’s much easier than using vlookup in the GS so even if you move a column your data remains ok, while in GS moving a column that is used for vlookup will destroy the vlookup function and “break” our data.
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Conditions - simple conditions are much easier to do in glide than GS but complex one will need workaround and in many cases many additional columns to achieve something relatively easy with nesting IFs in the GS.
Disadvantages:
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No array columns - in GS when we create columns with name and running number (i.e. mail 1, mail 2, mail n) glide create an array column (i.e. “mail”) that allow us to do many things like one conditions on all mails or a gallery of images. Glide team says that a better solution than array column will be available (let’s wait and see) - HUGE disadvantage!
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New columns - creation of new columns is sezific and irritating in the glide editor compared to GS but you can easily change the column type if you made a mistake.
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Split columns - in GS split column create additional columns which can later be used easily to other calculations and template etc. in glide, split column creates an array column which is harder to use (you can’t reach each individual part of the splitted data so for example splitting a date (01/10/2020) to 3 columns (01,10,2020) and then create a template of month and year (10/2020) was a challenging task in the editor which needed an additional table that contained all months and than relation and lookup and only then building a template. - very complicated and not user friendly!
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Add and delete data - you can’t add or delete data directly to the editor so in order to add data one must build all the forms with all the fields to add testing fake data. Also, you can’t just mark a row and delete the data, you’ll need to create the edit form with the delete button - HUGE waste of time and not user friendly!
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RTL based dates - when using the app in a device set to hebrew glide recognized it’s in hebrew and changed the dates presentation to dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm (in oppose to mm/hh/yyyy h:mm PM/AM, this created a problem with one of my templates which is based on a relation to the texted month (another workaround needed to do as the split date relation returned on Oct 1st month 1 (i.e. Jan) instead of Oct) so in hebrew it didn’t work as the months are written in english. Another weird thing was that when i exited the app and cleaned my recent apps (not cash nor cookies) and relaunched the app it was sorted but the app was now in english (including all glide fields such as add, edit etc.) and the dates turn back to be presented in american view.
To summarize: it is not there yet but it looks as if it will be soon enough and to my humble opinion this will be a Game changer! (no less) and will completely change the way we build apps in glide.
), it’s the ability to do it without using any GS tricks (which I’ve now learn how much I’m depending on).
