Is "do a search" always better than "filter"?

[philnauta]

I’ve read several times in the forum that doing a search is always preferred to filtering, but what about in this example:

I have 2 data types: User and Item

There are 10,000 Users and 1,000 Items, of which 3 are assigned to the current user. Only 2 of those 3 items are currently ‘Available’ and I want to display the current user’s available items. Should my data source be:

“Do a search for Item’s List of Users where User = Current User”
or
“Do a search of User’s List of Items where Available = yes”
or
“Current User’s List of Items:filtered where Available = yes”

Seems to me the last one would be most efficient, no?

[Bubbleboy]

The 3rd option you reference is the one I use. I’ve always understood that “do a search” is not optimal unless absolutely necessary. If I can recall correctly when I was 1st using bubble I took up some one-to-one coaching… In my 1st application I was picked up promptly on this very point and it was suggested to me filtering based on a specific list to a given user in this case is best practice. just my two cents

[philnauta]

Thanks, yes, the 3rd option makes sense to me in this case, but Emmanuel said:

Filtering versus Search for

It is always better to have as many constraints as possible in the search, the filter is more of a 2nd solution if there is a constraint you cannot express within our current search engine.

and

Difference between datasource criteria vs datasource filtering

The search is more efficient as the selection is in the database, on the server, while the filtering is done on the page. So you have more options, but all the data needs to be loaded which can be quite slow. The rule being: always always use searches when you can, and use filters when you really need it and cannot use a search.

…so I wondered if I was missing something.

[vincent56]

Best is to test on a blank page and see which option is faster, its not always one or the other I have noticed!

Did you try this and if so, could you share?

[philnauta]

Problem is I don’t have these users and items yet, so I can’t test at scale (I will have them this year because the users are waiting for the application to be finished, but I’d like to get this right before sharing with them).

Good idea though, I guess I could try importing dummy data - it’s just a lot of fields and other tables that rely on each other, so not quick to set up that data.