PowerApps resilience

[Anonymous]

Good Day,

Lately, my Line-Manager asked me about Powerapps resilience, but I found myself unable to provide a proper answer ^^

From a Database prospective:

1- How many Tables, and how many Fields fields can PowerApps run without crashing ? (providing the Database only contains Text inputs)

2- How much data can PowerApps handle (without crashing) ?

2- How many users can be connected simultaneously to PowerApps without crashing ?

Many thanks in anticipation ^^

Anthony

[Drrickryp]

Hi @Anonymous 

PowerApps is mostly a front end of a database.  It is very flexible and can be built around over 250 different datasources ranging from an Excel table to Sql and Dataverse (CDS).  Moreover, tables from different datasources can be combined in a single application.  The answers to your questions mostly depend on your choice of the back end or datasources.  This is where the limitations (or lack of them) take place and also where the costs are run up.  A single Excel table may only allow 1 user to make a change at a time but its free, while a SQL table can handle millions of users and transactions simultaneously but there is a fee per user.  

[Anonymous]

Good Day Drrickryp,

Thanks for your quick response!

OK I must admit I haven’t been very specific in the first place:

Lately, I built a fully functional MS Access Database with just 1 table and about 25 lines with 20 fields each. Text only. A kind of test if you like...

I then uploaded this DB to our Sharepoint 365, and from there , I turned the DB to a webapp using PowerApps.

So far so good…

And so, from there, my line-manager (as well as other people) would like to know, ideally, how many lines and how many fields I could add to the webapp without crashing it, and how many users can connect to the webapp simultaneously.

That’s what I’m asking precisely. We are concerned about this. Is this more specific to you?

If so, thanks for letting me know ^^

Cheers!

Anthony

[Drrickryp]

Hi @Anonymous 

As a datasource, SharePoint has limitations.  The first most important to consider is delegation.  PowerApps runs on a browser and relies on the datasource to perform certain functions.  Please see @WarrenBelz 's blog post https://warrenbelz.blogspot.com/2020/08/power-apps-delegation-is-word-not.html  .  After reading this, you may decide that PowerApps may not work for your application.  I also migrated to PowerApps from MS Access with a database that had 15,000 patients with 40,000+ visits that I had been using since 2003.  I first tried SharePoint and found it to be too limited.  I ultimately moved on to CDS now called Dataverse and have been completely satisfied with it. As far as SharePoint goes, up to 2k items in a table (list) is fine, workarounds are required when you get between 2k and 4k items, More than that becomes increasingly difficult in terms of performance.  Ultimately, IMHO, if you are going to run an enterprise, you will need to go to Dataverse or SQL.   

[WarrenBelz · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Adding to @Drrickryp 's comments (and thank you for the blog tag @Drrickryp ), that information is sound advice.

One thing that may be a factor is cost as SharePoint comes "free" with an E3 licence and DataVerse / SQL are Premium Connectors meaning each user connecting needs a Per User Power Apps licence.

If cost is not an issue with this in mind, read no further as they are better data platforms.

We run a substantial operation on SharePoint / Power Apps / Power Automate with many lists over 10,000 items and some libraries over 40,000 files (mainly photos). As long as you structure your data with field types mentioned in my blog, the retrieval of data (and we are mainly on iPads in the field)  performs very well. Writing data has never been an issue.

We can have over 100 "concurrent" users at times, but going to your question on this, the only real test here is concurrent writes to your data source as Power Apps loads "locally" on the user's device. As mentioned, we have no issues here, but as SharePoint is "shared" with millions of users, I would suspect the only effect would be a delay in writing if it was "busy", however this is only summation and I welcome other thoughts.

[Anonymous]

Guys thanks you. My project is a not a "too big" project , therefore PowerApps will be suitable. My database will certainly not exceed 500 items.

Resolved !