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bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/performance/hidden-flowfields-still-calculate-on-pages.md
Jesper Schulz-Wedde 800e266bfe Add seven performance knowledge articles from BC developer guidance 
Cover non-obvious platform behaviors a capable LLM reliably gets wrong:
hidden FlowFields still calculate, LockTable scopes to the whole table,
query objects bypass the primary-key cache, table-event subscribers
disable bulk ModifyAll/DeleteAll, Blob fields are uncached, OnCompanyOpen
subscribers block every session creation, and the test framework
disables bulk insert mode.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-24 10:38:28 +02:00

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bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
all
performance
flowfield
visible
enabled
page
calcfields
feature-management
al
w1
all

Hidden FlowFields still calculate on pages

Description

Setting Visible = false or Enabled = false on a FlowField hides the control but does not suppress the calculation. The server still runs the underlying CalcFields for every row the page renders. On a list page over a large table, the invisible column keeps consuming the same SQL as a visible one — the hiding is cosmetic only, and a diff that "turns off" an expensive FlowField by flipping Visible fixes nothing on the server.

There are two correct remedies. The durable one is to remove the FlowField from the page or page-extension definition entirely — property toggles are not enough. The environment-level one, available where supported, is the Calculate only visible FlowFields feature in Feature Management; when enabled, the AL runtime skips calculation for non-visible FlowFields on pages. The feature is opt-in and administrator-controlled, so code cannot assume it is active.

Best Practice

Remove unused or hidden FlowFields from the page or page extension. If the field is needed for some users but expensive for others, factor into a dedicated page variant rather than hiding it in place. Do not rely on Visible = false as a performance fix unless the tenant has enabled the Calculate only visible FlowFields feature and that assumption is acceptable.

Anti Pattern

A performance PR that sets Visible = false on an expensive FlowField on a list page and claims the column no longer impacts load time. The control disappears from the UI, the CalcFields still runs for every row, and the list page stays slow.