Submit your WORKLOAD questions!

@petter Here’s a WF issue / error but I don’t think it’s in your wheelhouse as it seems to be a major error occuring: Bubble Roadmap Update: Workload Management Tooling - #62 by code-escapee

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You know the drill, Petter’s scope is the docs :slight_smile:

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Well @petter you can embed the airtable list of WU activities into the manual to replace the :framed_picture: (png!) that makes it super difficult to extract text from…

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@code-escapee

Agreed, screenshots are not optimal – I’m looking into ways to expand on it and – yes, make it easier to extract from.

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Due to a recent project:

If I ignore individual fields in an API call by ticking the box, are WUs still consumed for the ignored fields?

Why not just list the workloads for each action/workflow right in the action and workflow items. Why the need to guess when bubble is already tracking it all?

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Bubble’s idea is that they don’t want you to worry about the individual WU each action and search uses, and just assume that it’ll be reasonable, which is why they won’t do something like this.

Is that a good approach? No, but it is how they’re doing it so it is what it is.

Adding fields to a call doesn’t use WU really… it’s filling fields with additional dynamic data that uses WU.

Great bunch of informations!


Serotonina

I missed to check this thread earlier. Didn’t realise all these updates had happened here.

@petter Just to confirm, is this the manual you are referring to or something else?
https://manual.bubble.io/help-guides/workload

I quickly went through it.

Do you think it answers all the questions that were raised earlier in this post and this? In my quick skimming through the content it doesn’t seem like it does answer these. Though it is quite well done and nicely structured, so that’s good.

One example scenario that has been running in my mind and I think there are a few threads too on it is the use-case of invisible repeating groups. Under what conditions do they consume WUs, when they do not etc. are not very clear.

Asking question in manual didn’t give any answer.

So, is it possible to make the documentation such that it can answer the practical questions that us developers face, apart from having high level general stuff about how workload works and high level optimisation techniques? e.g. In repeating groups itself there are many things like how should one take care of pagination, handling sorting, showing RG’s count in another text field etc.

There are many threads where people keep discussing how WUs work, people share tips, people debunk those tips etc. For some things there are no answers really, even with Support team or documentation.

Here are some examples:

And this is after I am not that active on forums. I am sure there are many such posts which highlight how things are genuinely unclear when it comes to WUs.

I think current documentation is a good start, but there is a lot of ground to be covered to make WU calculation and optimisation clearer to people.

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Some more questions:

As per this entry in manual,
Performing a database search” is charged 0.3 WUs
Performing an aggregate query in the database” is charged 0.2 WUs.
Each call to watch a search for real-time updates” is charged 0.005 WUs

Is “call to watch a search for real-time updates” same for a normal search and aggregate search?

Some more:

  1. Are we charged for “Current User” data download even if we do not use Current User on a page?
  2. Are we charged WUs for each instance of “Current User” being used on frontend?
  3. Are we charged WUs for each instance of “Current User” being used in backend workflow?
  4. If a backend workflow uses a data and that data is passed to it as a parameter, are we still charged WUs if that workflow uses that parameter’s fields? What if it doesn’t use that parameter?

I have submitted questions in this post to Support too. Let’s see if I hear from them.

Thanks for all the great questions @mghatiya, I appreciate the time you take to note them down and share resources.

Is “call to watch a search for real-time updates ” same for a normal search and aggregate search?

Interesting question! I’m checking this with the engineers as we speak.

Are we charged for “Current User” data download even if we do not use Current User on a page?

Yes, this is a database lookup on par with everything else, and will lead to a slight WU cost. This is necessary for stuff like authenticating the user when sending database requests (meaning that the current user is always “used” even if you don’t directly referencing it in your work), so it can’t be avoided.

Are we charged WUs for each instance of “Current User” being used on frontend?

This would most likely depend on what exactly “used” means. For example, can you most likely show their names and other data without any additional WU, but involving the user in additional database requests will incur the regular db cost.

Yes, the amount on which will again depend on exaclty what you’re doing. But since in its very nature backend workflow happen on the server, they do incur a cost.

  1. If a backend workflow uses a data and that data is passed to it as a parameter, are we still charged WUs if that workflow uses that parameter’s fields? What if it doesn’t use that parameter?

The potential variety of what exactly this does is hard to gauge, so I’m hesitant to make any attempts on an educated guess on this one.

Let me know if support disagree with my assessments here.

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Hi @petter

When doing a search for, if I do not display the list in a repeating group but group by before displaying it am I charged only 0.3 or the same in the case of aggregate would I be charged only 0.2 for the entire operation? Or does it work that all the data is retrieved first and charged for WUs and then the group by/aggregate is applied?

As an example if I do a search + count on 10 million items, am I just charged 0.2 for the ENTIRE operation? Same for group by?