Hi – hopefully the below gives you some clarity…
As to the question “are very interconnected databases a terrible idea” – the answer is “no”. Relationships are the foundation of modern database design (thus the term “relational databases”). They have many advantages in making databases faster, lighter and more functional. But when you create relationships, you need to do them for the right reasons and set them up in the right way.
The inspector is showing what the browser downloads onto the page.
Everything is not automatically downloaded. Something else is going on, most likely with one of your searches. Basic concepts are:
- If a “thing” is downloaded (ie an item in the database), Bubble will download the data from each field for that specific thing, unless you’ve blocked specific fields via privacy settings.
- If a thing has a field that is a list of things of another datatype, it will download the IDs of the related things – not the data from the things themselves.
- Bubble only downloads the “things” that you are asking for. So most likely you have searches that are asking for thousands of things. This usually results from:
a) A repeating group that is set up to call all results if no constraints exist (use a scrolling RG instead, which will only pull a few items at a time)
b) A :filter that is executing client side, meaning that Bubble has to first download the things to the browser, and then filter them there, instead of filtering them on Bubble’s side and only sending the results to the browser
It’s great that you are reading @petter book – that’s essential. Also this is a great post to read on options for connecting data: Alternative approach to the Bubble’s recent tutorials for list of things
And this post from Josh is a bit old, but still has a lot of relevant stuff in it: Performance Q&A guide