Skinny tables and Summary fields

Dutchman
Thu, 09 May 2024 08:17:26 +0000
Questions

Hiya - I'm working on a solution that uses a fair number of summary fields. As a result, the total field count for the primary data table is higher than I'm used to (currently 35 fields). Normally I keep my field count very low and try very hard to normalize my data. One reason to do this of course is that when evaluating a found set, every field in a table's record is downloaded from server to the client. Having skinnier tables means less bandwidth gets taken up.

My question is this: are summary fields also part of this equation, or even unstored calculations? And are they re-evaluated for every record in a given found set? Ordinarily I would never have unstored calculation fields or summary fields, so I have no experience with performance issues, especially where there is a lot of data involved. In this case, the summary fields are (really well) integrated into dynamic sub-summary reports; otherwise I would use the calculation engine to aggregate whatever data I wanted summarized.

4 posts - 2 participants