Hey all, I’m trying to build out the last part of a calculation app and I’m looking for advice on how to approach this last part. Specifically, should I use Excel, Google Sheets or Glide (or something else) to build this part of the app out? Any advice is appreciated.
This last part of my app was built by a 3rd party in excel and I’m trying to mimic. The basic breakdown of the XLS is that there’s 2 tabs in the file. The first tab is a basic interface where the user fills in a few inputs about their project and then the second tab is the “Lookup” table" where it references the inputs from the user in tab 1 and runs the calculations and provides the user with their final output. In this second tab there are a 100 rows and at least 70 columns with a TON of Vlookups and other “Excel specific” functions. The data in this second tab is predominantly “static” data in that the information in this table will only be changed by the admin.
Any computed logic you can move out of the sheet and into glide is going to make for a much better user experience. Rather than waiting several seconds or minutes to get a result back from the sheet, you can calculate it instantly in Glide. Plus, with user specific columns to hold your entry values, this will allow multiple users to use the app at the same time without overwriting each other.
Most computed columns in Glide actually compute directly on the user’s device, so the response time is instant as there is no waiting for data to sync. If computations happen on an external database, then any changes to data need to first sync to Glide servers, then sync to that external data database, then wait for that external database to do any computations and sync back to Glide whenever it feels convenient, then sync back to the end user device. So it comes down to doing the computations directly on the user’s device…or waiting for data to sync across multiple servers, compute, and sync across servers back to the user. One way is clearly the winner. It’s the same case regardless of external database used. Some are better than others, but there is going to be a noticable delay if your computation logic is not within Glide.