Update same table from different apps

[Sarah_Keown]

Hi, I have two different apps.

1. Product Catalogue that allows users to add/update products for specific projects

2. A project specific ordering app that pulls in the catalogue data

The same table is in both apps, in the project specific ordering app the table is read only but still continues to update if the table is chnaged in app 1.

However, I was doing testing in an undeployed app and the project specific app would only update if it was no longer read only?

Is it normal for this to work for deployed apps but not undeployed?

[Steve]

A table in an app that is explicitly read-only is subject to server-side caching to improve performance.

In effect, when AppSheet sees a table is read-only, it assumes the data in the table will not change–at all, by any means. So AppSheet copies the data from the data source and keeps the copy. Requests from the app for that table’s data get the copied data, not whatever is currently in the data source.

I don’t know how long the data is cached, but obviously it’s long enough to be a problem for you. I don’t believe there’s any way to affect this caching behavior.

I don’t know if it would work, but you could try changing Are updates allowed? from Read-Only to the expression, "READ_ONLY". My guess is the caching behavior is triggered by the explicit Read-Only setting, but not by an expression result.