Things to avoid?

[Trey Childs]

Hi,

I’m wondering if there is some informal list of things that should be avoided because of the issues they may cause.

For example:

1. Using Emoji in the names of forms, categories, etc. but not in form field names.
2. Having a large database. I don’t know what’s considered large. Mine’s about 650 MB at present.
3. Many or complex calculated fields on a form. Is there some recommendation as to a total number of calculated fields a form should have or how complex a calculaton should be allowed to get before there’s significant performance or support issues?
4. File attachments – certainly I try to keep this to a reasonable minimum, but any specific recommendations other than the most obvious things like storing a lot of photos?
5. Using VPNs – I use a privacy VPN product (CloakVPN). I have set it up to activate whenever there is any network request, on all wifi and cellular networks. Sometimes, of course, that means a delayed start to a connection or a dropped connection in the middle of an app trying to perform work. Are there any known issues or reasons I should be concerned?

Sorry for the long post.

Thanks

[Brendan]

Hi Trey,

Are you currently having issues with these things? Or were you just posting to be proactive?

1. I haven’t really tried using Emojis in form names or fields. I don’t see why they wouldn’t work though.

2. The larger the database file, the slower it will get. You can compact the database size by using the Vacuum Database function in the Database Maintenance screen in the Preferences window. That will reduce the size of the database file.

3. If you have a lot of Calculation fields, it will slow down. Especially if you have calculation fields which reference other calculation fields. Tap Forms must compute the result of all the referenced calculation fields in a formula before it can compute its own result.

4. Tap Forms generates a QuickLook preview of the file attachments, so the more you have, the slower it will be. It does do it on a background thread though.

5. I don’t use a VPN, so I have no direct experience with it and Tap Forms. But I don’t see why it would make much of a difference, except maybe for the speed of syncing. VPNs always slow down network traffic since they have extra hops and encryption stuff to do.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Trey Childs]

I’m not having any issues with these things specifically – It was just proactive.

I use TapForms extensively and just wanted to know if anything I might be doing was “ill-advised.” :)

Say for example, that having a 500MB database (vaccuumed) isn’t any cause for any concern in itself. Maybe lots of people do it with no issues, so not to be alarmed by it. Or that people have used, let’s assume, 30 simple calculations on a form without any issues. That kind of thing.

Thanks

[Brendan]

I am working on an update which will make the size of the database file much smaller whilst storing the same amount of data. Just an FYI.

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