Best architecture - To populate dropdown values

Hi Reggie,
There is some gap in understanding my question.

Does Appian provides Caching so I can cache the data it can be large in size i.e. say 100 rows to 10000 rows. This data i need frequently to use so want to cache. But also i want to get latest copy of this data after some interval (configurable) say 4 hours, 24 hours etc.

Pravin,

I do not think there is any way to Cache a value to be stored in the system to be used other places. I do have a few suggestions.

1.just do additional query every time the screen is loaded to get most up to date value if possible.

2. Get access to a DB to persistent this data some where. Then run a process model on a normal basis to update the values.

3. Now is where it gets interesting. If you can't get ahold of a DB you could have a process that gets the values every x amount of time and this process stays active untill the next pull. This way you will allways have an active process with the updated values. Then you could use a process report with a query to the report to get the values.

4. When you do you pull for the data you could take the data and store it to a constant. Then your drop downs would just be built from the constants.

I would caution though that if your values used to populate the drop down are changing regularly then you end up in a situation where the value loaded into the form is not in the options array. You may want to wrap your drop down with a checker to ensure your sail does not break in this situation.

Thanks Joshua for clear explanation.

on the appian documentation you have the guidelines

community.appian.com/.../managing-reference-data

On the DOs and DONTs, you have this:

Allow users to make changes to existing data as this will impact older data. Instead, allow users deactivate the old name and create a new name using effective dates and end dates.

Effective dating and end dating is also useful as an alternative for deleting data.


So, additionally, i would suggest that if you want "real time data" of your configs, use a with variable instead of a load and perhaps some configuration flags if you want the same settings to be alive in your whole process (i.e. use effective dates )