EnumList inconsistent serialization behavior when using Sheets vs AppSheet Database

[mattlin]

Background

• I have an app in production that uses AppSheets as the database.
• I am having issues with the EnumList behavior. I made a copy of the app to test changes in DEV without affecting PROD. The copy of the app now uses Sheets as the database.
• The EnumList behavior in DEV is now fixed without any additional config changes, just because DEV uses Sheets as the backend DB.

The behavior of EnumList seems to change when it writes the data back into the database. For example, if I use a delimiter like "my-delim" and select a couple of values:

• In DEV, the resulting Sheets cell would be correct: "123my-delim456"
• in PROD, the resulting AppSheets cell would be incorrect and revert to: "123, 456"
  • However, there is a split second where the column displays correctly as "123my-delim456" but then it reverts itself to using commas.

I cannot use commas as the delimiter because the enum values may contain commas. I will be using something like a semicolon or a pipe (`|`).

[Steve · Accepted solution]

I recommend against using AppSheet Database.