Unknown error when table contains fields with complex or nested formulas or references to other formula fields

Technical Help
1

Are you using our SaaS platform (Baserow.io) or self-hosting Baserow?

Self-hosted

If you are self-hosting, which installation method do you use to run Baserow?

Cloudron

Issue

On a VPS with 8 vCPU cores, 24 GB RAM, SSD storage, Baserow formula fields fail with a generic “Unknown error” when:

  • Multiple working logic branches are combined into one formula
  • Formulas are deeply nested
  • Fields reference other formula fields and field options or field names should be changed.

Each part of the logic works fine in its own field, but combining them into a single field causes silent failure. The issue seems unrelated to server performance and points to possible internal limits in formula parsing, evaluation depth, or execution time.

Expected behavior:
The formula should evaluate or at least fail with a clear error message explaining the cause.

Suggested improvements:

  • Clarify formula limits (e.g., nesting depth, max complexity) in documentation
  • Improve error messages for failed formula evaluation
  • Allow referencing between formula fields more reliably
2

Hey @Mary-Lou, thank you for your feedback! We’re currently working on formula performance improvements, and I’ll share your feedback with the team to see if this issue will be addressed with the upcoming changes. :slightly_smiling_face:

3

Hey @Mary-Lou,

To better understand what’s going wrong and help improve the performance, we’ll need a bit more information from you, such as:

  • Your database structure
  • The number of rows
  • The number and types of fields
  • The formulas you’re using

With that, we can try to reproduce the setup and investigate what might be causing the issue.

Thanks in advance!