Creating new fields - Long transaction time

[Community Alums]

When creating new fields on a table that extends the task table, typically it only takes a few seconds to add a field.  For some reason, today, each new field is taking about 4 minutes and it runs a child process that seems to be making an update to over 1 million records on the task table.  I am following the same process I was just a few days ago when adding fields to the same form.  Is there something that has changed behind the scenes that I need to look at?

Any information is appreciated.

Edit: A similar thing has happened once before, when moving an update set to production for another team, About 1 million records on the task table were updated because of a field that was added.  It took a long time to complete.  This update set, and the fields today are the only two instances I've ever seen this behavior.

Thanks!

[Anurag Tripathi]

Hi,

The field you created, did it have any default value? 

When you create a field with a default value, all existing records get updated as this field gets created and a value is populated in it.

Im positive this would be the case, this is something i always advise and keep in mind always while creating a field on any major or large table.

-Anurag

[Mark Roethof]

I also experienced this a few times the past few months. Actually, really don't know the answer for this!
It does also happen with no default value set.

Kind regards,
Mark

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[Community Alums]

So is it safe to proceed with this, and assume it will take some extra time to implement into production?

[Mark Roethof]

Can't tell if it's safe... because I really don't know why this occurs. We didn't experience any issues after promoting to production, so that's good of course. Though still don't know why this occurs.

Kind regards,
Mark

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