CSV download delay

[ranorga]

Dear Community:
I have a table of 14,000 records (simple without virtual columns, or complicated formulas) and a slice that makes a selection of records that can later be downloaded as CSV.

The problem is that downloading 1 or 50 records takes the same time as downloading 14,000 records, that is, between 60 and 90 seconds. Obviously our client does not accept having to wait so long every time he selects a few records.

When we have presented the case to Support, they have told us that it is 1 or 14,000 (the total data). AppSheet works with all the data and therefore takes so long.

I think it’s a point for Google Cloud engineers to work on fixing.

Anyone have any other ideas?

[Grant_Stead]

Are you using a database?

[ranorga]

OneDrive

[Grant_Stead]

Then, Excel hosted in onedrive?

[ranorga]

Yes, Grant_Stead.

[Grant_Stead]

Hosted Excel with that many records is going to get very slow… I tend to roll with emailed Excel reports on demand.

[ranorga]

But the problem is that downloading 1 record in CSV takes the same time as downloading the 14,000 (or more) that the database has. So the problem is not the Excel but the architecture of the platform.

[Steve]

SmartD:

So the problem is not the Excel but the architecture of the platform.

Nope. The entire spreadsheet must be loaded in order to access the rows you want. The problem is you’re using a spreadsheet rather than a database.

[ranorga]

The value proposition of AppSheet indicates that you can have a powerful product from spreadsheets, in fact the name of AppSheet says so. I still believe that this can be solved and that the download of records in CSV can take time depending on the number of records that are downloaded (as if a security filter were applied).

This issue can potentially affect hundreds of thousands of users using the CSV download.

We hope AppSheet engineers who always surprise us with amazing functionality can fix this problem.

[Grant_Stead]

Also, if you switch to google sheets you may even see better performance. They’ve made pretty cool advancements there. But Excel is very flat in nature.