Error unable to edit appsheet

[greenmore]

My Appsheet is currently having an error: "Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding."
Right now I can't edit or change anything about it.
Does anyone have a way to help me fix this?
I tried every possible way but it didn't work

[AleksiAlkio]

What data source are you using with your app?

[greenmore]

I am using data source (Database): Google sheets

[AleksiAlkio]

Are you able to open that gSheet just fine? Does it show a gray progress bar on the upper right corner when opening?

[greenmore]

I still opened that file normally, and saw a blue progress bar appear, but only for about 5 seconds and then it disappeared.

[AleksiAlkio]

Any chance someone has accidently change the tab or column name(s) in your gSheet?

[greenmore]

When I try to delete some tables, sometimes it gives an error, sometimes it doesn't?

[AleksiAlkio]

Is the error message then something else?

[EtienneGrenier]

Can someboday help us here?!.... We really don't know what to do?!...

[greenmore]

I think it's possible, but if you change the sheet name or column name, the system will have to report an error to restructure, right?

[EtienneGrenier]

We have the same problem... On 2 of our applications. It seems to be when the applications are too big (too many tables, too many rows, etc.)

but once the damage is done...what can we do to fix it?!...even if we try to delete the tables we still have the same problem?!?...

[EtienneGrenier]

Did you find a way to fix this?!

[greenmore]

We haven't found a way to fix this problem yet? Our only solution now is to rebuild another app

[AleksiAlkio]

How many tables, rows approx. do you have in your gSheet? 

[EtienneGrenier]

We have 35 tables and although the majority of tables have ±50 rows, there are 4 tables that have more than 5000 rows.

...I anticipate what you will answer me... that the problem is that there are too many lines and tables to load...

...if this is the case... I wonder how to make an effective application... let's say for example that we carry out 1000 inspections per month with several photos in these inspections... just with this example we would have 2 tables one for the inspections and one for the photos of the inspections... These 2 tables, alone, will produce more than 12,000 rows per year...not to mention that the table of the photos of the inspection would be even more than 12,000 rows given that several photos are taken during inspections.

How to use Appsheet to make an application that will perform and last over time?!

...and at the same time... what can I do with my current problem... we don't want to redo the entire application... especially if the same problem will arise...

*Note
We have contacted technical support... they are looking into all of this.

[AleksiAlkio]

You anticipated it wrongly 🙂 Your data size is not big yet.
(31 tables * 50 rows  + 4 tables * 5000 rows) * 15 columns = 325.000 cells.

If your column amount is about that size, I guessed (average), this is not the reason. I have built much bigger apps with gSheet where some of the tables had 30..40k rows with lot of columns and more tables than you have, and the sync time has been 15..20 secs.. and without any security filter. When the app/data gets too big, syncing takes more and more time and then finally, it throws a timeout error because the app was not able to read the data or calculations with the virtual columns took too much time.

To build a big app with lot of tables and columns and lot of data, the solution is quite often to use real databases because then you can filter the data when the data is fetched from the database. But before that, you need to understand your app what you can filter away so the data would be as light as possible because you are using the app with the mobile devices. This doesn't mean that you can't use that filtered data, you just need to request it when it's really needed.

When using spreadsheets as a data source, the challenge is that when you sync the data, the app needs to fetch all tabs with all data from the spreadsheet. Google Sheet has it's own limits (10.000.000 cells), but the practical limit is somewhere 800.000 - 1.000.000 cells. Though you can use security filters with the app, but the filtering is happening in AppSheet server, not in Google Sheets.

[EtienneGrenier]

First of all, thank you very much for your quick response and for taking the time to explain all of this to me. It is really appreciated.

Now... what can I do to remove the timed out:... error?
because now... I can't make any changes... not even go back to an old version... or delete tables, rows or anything...

thanks again for your time... 🙂

[AleksiAlkio]

I haven't seen this kind of behavior earlier.. so difficult to say what's the reason. If it's a bug, there is nothing you can fix. If there is something wrong with your gSheet, you could make a copy of it and then reassign tables one by one. The problem is.. you don't know is that the reason until you have reassigned them all.. maybe.