One large table vs. additional table with one to one reference

[wcksmith]

I have a very large app I’m building with the potential for 150 fields of info to collect for each job (assessing damaged homes in a disaster relief effort).  Not all fields are used for each record.  Would it be better to have all 150 fields in one table, or set up additional tables with one-to-one relationship for groups of similar fields (example: for renters, having rental as well as owner information; for chainsaw work have chainsaw requirements, etc.). 

My only real concern is load time and sync time of the app for iPads & phones.  I don’t know which would be quicker and more stable if I have 2,500 or more records in the primary table. 

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

Wick

[WillowMobileSys · Accepted solution]

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@wcksmith wrote:

Would it be better to have all 150 fields in one table, or set up additional tables with one-to-one relationship for groups of similar fields

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The latter - additional tables with grouped fields

The reasons are two-fold:

1)  AppSheet uses parallel processing to load the data so two tables half the size of the original can be read into the app in about HALF the time.  

2)  You only need to create rows in the child tables when needed.  This will reduce the number of empty columns to help increase Sync times as well.