Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

I have been enthusiatic about PowerApps so far, and the Microsoft team has been adding some great functionality. I was really looking forward to the Common Data Model (CDM), as finally we power users could move on from Access Web Apps (AWA) as a datasource. This is because AWAs are clearly not being developed any more, and SharePoint lists are far from ideal as a data source for any serious application.

However, from a first look it seems like CDM is just recycled SharePoint lists! A Title field is required, what nonesense!

Will querying (in the SQL-like sense) ever be available and efficient so that some processing can be properly delegated to the server?

I think I will stick to AWA (since it is proper Azure), so Microsoft team just please give PowerApps the possibility of using Azure queries as a data source. We have been asking this for a while.

I am happy to hear other opinions and be corrected if anyone else has a different point of view or more insight than I have.

PS It doesn't harm, but the plethora of standard entities in CDM is just a waste of space. You take more time finding the correct entity and inevitably customising it than creating an entity from scratch.

Categories:

Building Power Apps

I'm an Excel user, and as of right now the advantages of CDM are few in this initial release. It is better to stick to Excel unless these are appealing:

Validation: You can validate the kind of entry: value, text, boolean, etc. Excel is text-only when Patching.
Sharing: I assume the "common" in "common data model" takes care of the sharing in your network for you
Publishing: The PowerApps Excel add-in is pretty fast at syncing. It is faster than OneDrive at detecting and syncing changes, which in turn can be refreshed in app.
It's free. It is SharePoint for users who do not already have SharePoint on an E3 or E5 service.

Things that CDM needs in order to be an alternative to Excel hosted on OneDrive/Dropbox:

Delegation of aggregate functions so that you can perform calculations on more than 500 records--this is my number one priority in all of PowerApps features. No PowerApps are capable of being taken to production without this.
Stay logged in. The Excel Add-in logs out after a while, like all Microsoft services. There needs to be a better security protocol than to log users off to keep them safe. I've always been bothered by this.