Number of Apps, Best Practice

Question

I've always read, and indeed from my own experience, to keep the number of apps I have to a minimum, if possible. This is for a few reasons:

1. Avoid Cross App Relationships
2. Much easier to manage (more apps is more role management, security access mgmt, more dashboards, home pages, etc).

I tend to only separate apps in a few circumstances:

1. It is a clear and major division (perhaps 2 companies, 2 very different business goals, etc).
2. I can definitely keep that app separate from any other app, thus not sharing system resources.

I do have app 'clusters', that is to say I have 3 apps with cross app relationships, then a cluster of another 2 apps with cross app relationships. Those clusters are separated though and don't share system resources.

Do other people have other takes on this? Many apps vs minimal apps?

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Mike Tamoush
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markshnier__you · Answer

If you have one large app and you split it into two, but you have cross up relationships then you'll have gained nothing. Cross up relationships are not the problem. Really the problem is when you have an app or a cluster of apps which are cross linked to each other then you are restricting that app to run on one server process. If you have a busy app with lots of concurrent users than performance will be degraded and your users will complain.

The best practice would be to have more apps and not have them cross linked. The only way to do that if you have common tables is to use Sync tables or some kind of pipeline to mirror the information across. That way each app gets their own server process.

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Mark Shnier (YQC)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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austink · Answer

I agree with Mark as far as sync or pipelines goes. I like sync better than pipelines but that's mostly because pipelines has a tendency to just blow up randomly and not actually show you the issue it is having. If the error handling was more clear I would not mind using pipelines as much.

I currently help maintain something that used to be basically one giant app that did everything. We have been working on splitting parts out of it for a long time now. It is work that takes a lot of planning because you end up tied up by many things you need to fix before you can move one workflow out of your app to another.

The absolute worst part imo about the one app approach is that once your single app goes above 1GB in size the sandbox is crippled. You can no longer import ANY records automatically when creating your sandbox, not all and not 50, none. You either create a full app copy and get to deal with 2 large apps while you work or you create your own program to make sure your app copy has a small amount of records by purging them table by table when creating it. This is a big reason we are trying to split out our gigantic app into smaller ones.

Working in the sandbox with zero records sucks. You can import them manually but it is annoying to do when you have a ton of tables. Then your records are not related either unless you really go above and beyond when doing your imports.

I have asked Quickbase staff in the past if there were any plans for increasing the 1GB limit and they said not at all. This was not just customer service that told me this but a higher up that I forget the name of unfortunately.

miketamoush · Answer

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Yes, when I have a cluster of apps (that will have cross app relationships) the only reason I split them, is if there is a clearly defined reason to from an organizational standpoint. I typically like to have as few apps as possible, just from a management of apps standpoint.

If I can ever split apps with no report links, T2T imports, or cross app relationships I do so.

I was just wondering if anyone has found any other advantage to splitting an app, instead of just one giant app (assuming splitting will still have cross app relationships).

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Mike Tamoush
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miketamoush · Answer

Austin,Good thought on the app size. Luckily, my biggest app is 160mb so I don't see that as a problem in my case. Though, i rarely if ever work in the sandbox because I have cross app relationships, and typically what I need to work on relies on working on 2 apps.I'm with you on Sync over Pipeline. I find it much easier. Sync is a heavier load from a resource standpoint though, so you need to be careful if they run every hour. If they run once in the middle of the night, not really an issue.------------------------------Mike Tamoush------------------------------

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Number of Apps, Best Practice