Admin Tip That Can Save you some time

[Edward Rosario]

We’ve all been there: you’re trying to open a massive table—syslog, sys_audit, sys_email, anything with millions of rows—and you get greeted by that lovely pop-up:

“Running transaction…”

And then you wait.
And wait.
And secretly hope the browser doesn’t freeze while you’re just trying to troubleshoot a script.

The Fix: Use .FILTER Instead of .LIST

Next time you need to dive into a heavy table, skip the usual:

tablename.list

and go with:

tablename.filter

What’s the difference?

• .LIST fires a query immediately.
  The moment the list view loads, the platform tries to render results—sometimes thousands or millions of them—before you even get a chance to filter.

• .FILTER loads the list with zero records.
  It still opens the list layout, but it doesn’t run any query until you trigger it.
  This means you get the filter panel instantly and can apply specific conditions before hitting “Run”.

Why this matters (especially on big tables)

• You avoid unnecessary long-running queries.

• You reduce load on your instance (yes, performance teams will thank you).

• You get to the data you need faster—especially when debugging.

• You prevent locking yourself into 5 minutes of “Running transaction...” purgatory.

A Typical Use Case

You’re looking for a specific script log in syslog but only remember the script include name and rough timestamp.

Instead of letting the instance choke on millions of rows:

syslog.filter

Then filter by:

• Script: your script include

• Message contains: keyword

• Time > 15 minutes ago

Clean, fast, and controlled.

Bonus Tip: Add It to Your Muscle Memory

This trick is especially useful for:

• syslog

• sys_audit

• sys_audit_delete

• sys_email

• sys_attachment

• cmdb_ci tables in large environments

• Any custom table that’s grown out of control over the years

Once you start using .filter, you realize how much time you’ve wasted watching that spinner.

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