I just recently converted three of my Glide tables to Google Tables (exported to a Google sheet and then attached it to my App).
I did it so I could write programs to auto-purge records from these three Google Sheets based on age because I expect them to get large rather fast. I will also purge records left orphans by deleted or inactive users.
I made a copy of the tabs using those tables and attached to copied tabs to the new Google Tables.
Then there was the work of re-populating the tabs with the correct objects. Even though the fields were named the same, and I had re-created all the computed columns in the Google Tables, Glide got confused with the switch.
It may be my imagination, but the app seems slower now, and I have a pro app with fewer than 500 rows total.
Is that because of the concurrent sync between the Google Table and the Google Sheet?
It definitely is slower with Google sheets as compared to glide tables as sync is a major concern!
Glide tables are stored within firestore database while google sheets are synced to the firestore first and then rendered.
But the lag should not more than a few milliseconds to 2 seconds tops.
It does give you the benefit of writing formulas or writing appscript using Google sheet.
It’s worth the exchange.
I think this can help you understand more about the sync between Google Sheets and Glide. We usually refer to these as “Google Sheets” and “Glide Tables”, just a point so we don’t get confuse.
Do you mean that you replaced Glide computed columns with spreadsheet formulas? If yes, that could be the reason why your app is now apparently slower.
The client never communicates directly with the backend storage, so it should make no difference whether you are using Glide Tables or Google Sheets in terms of performance. The only time you’ll see a delay is when the client needs to fetch or wait for some data from the back end.
Imagine that you have a screen where you collect two values, add them together and then display the result. If you’re doing that calculation in a spreadsheet column, then the input data needs to travel from the client to the Glide cloud, from there to the spreadsheet, wait for the formula to calculate, then back to the Glide cloud, and finally back to the client. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.
But if you’re using Glide computed columns, everything happens on the client device and the result is available instantaneously.
No, what I mean is I made all the columns that I needed in the Google Sheet, populated the data and then attached it to my App.
Then in Glide I added all the computed columns that I had on my native Glide Table.
THEN I duplicated the TAB and renamed it to “new GS tab”. Then I pointed it to the Google Sheet table. All the objects on the form broke and had to be re-added. Not difficult, just tedious. I was hoping that since the fields had the same name it would just point to the fields in the Google Sheet.
After working with this all day, I wanted to give an update on the speed. After implementing several tricks and tips of users on this forum, I was able to implement owner rows and row sharing in the critical table that needed it (based on a Google Sheet).
The speed on the phone has gone back to what I was used to with pure Glide Tables.
I am grateful for all the help I received today. Thank you all.