I'm in V16 and have a good use for an object field. Specifically, for
storing objects ;-) I haven't yet done any research on 4D's object fields
regarding performance or storage space, and I hoping that someone has given
me a head start.
For background, the objects I'm storing are non-relational extract data.
Think of it by whatever term you prefer, "report table", "summary table",
"extract table", "fact table", etc. To build the summaries, I run through a
ton of data in several normalized tables and it takes a *long* time. The
results are then summarized at a couple of levels, which leaves me some
smallish objects to store. They're basically congealed CPU cycles. There
stored as static results in a table that can then be queried to generated a
wide variety of reports and graphs. Seems like a good use for an object
field. (I am not now and very likely never will use object fields in
standard transaction/user-facing tables. I will use them in summary tables,
program config, and messaging tables.)
Now to some questions using a made-up but relevant example. Imagine my
objects store something like this:
{
"date":"2017-01-01",
"items_total": 37,
"request_max": 12,
"request_min: 0
}
Let's say that I want to search for records where "request_max" is > 0 or
greater than 10 - something like that. Is it likely to be faster in a
stand-alone indexed longint field or embedded in the object field? I can
easily imagine it being faster in the object field, but it depends on
implementation and, to a lesser degree, is likely to depend a bit on the
data.
Any idea about storage requirements for objects? They're shown as JSON but
are presumably stored in a more efficient binary format of some kind that
takes less space.
Any idea about the 'automatic' index available for object fields? All I've
ever heard is that there is a 'hash table'. Which tells me just a bit more
than nothing, but not much more. (It's like telling me that a vehicle has
four wheels and one engine...it's information, but not very much
information.) Any idea about its nature, performance quirks, size, etc?
Thanks for any info.
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