Explaining (Occasional) Data Inaccuracies on the Gametize platform

Gametize uses a system of cached data and re-indexing to improve and maintain platform performance. As a result, there could be occasional data discrepancies and inaccuracies -  which could happen in places such as the Analytics dashboard or when a Player is reviewing the points via the app. 

Cached data is the data stored in a cache, typically a result of an earlier computation. Hence, displaying cached data is faster than recomputing a result or reading from the entire data store at the point of request. This allows us to fulfill more data requests from other components of the platform while ensuring that the platform is up to speed. Of course, the hindsight is that the data may not be accurate at the point of request. 

The total points earned by a Player being shown on the Leaderboard is an example of a cache data. Let us consider the following timeline: On 1 Feb end of day, you checked that you’ve got 258 points; on 2 Feb mid-day, you checked again and your points remained the same. But, you know that in between the Admin has awarded you some bonus points. The ‘258 points is a cached data, rather than a realtime update.

You may ask “When will this cached data be updated to reflect the latest data computation?”. There are many data stored in a cache in the entirety of the Gametize platform, and each has a different measure of how often they are updated. But, where it concerns the Players, the points cache updates whenever the Player: 

• Completes a challenge
• Views their profile
• Redeems a reward

Re-indexing is essentially a syncing process to ensure that the data is presented accurately and up to date using indexed data (if you are curious, you can learn more about indexing here). After learning about cached data on the Gametize platform, you may now understand why there could data inaccuracies. 

If may then ask again “When does re-indexing happen?”. On the Gametize platform, re-indexing happens at Project-level. Project-wide re-indexing is triggered when a Project Owner enters a Project via their Admin Dashboard. However, thresholds have been put in place to ensure that re-indexing does not happen too often that it affects other functions and Projects: 

• Only Projects within 20,000 completions and less can trigger the re-indexing. 
• The triggers happen every 10 days. 
• Any Project that is beyond this threshold would need additional assistance which you can contact us at support@gametize.com. 

Even though re-indexing is only triggered every 10 times an Admin enters the Project, it does not mean that your data is not updated. Remember, there are periodic caching happening. Re-indexing is an additional layer to do the overall syncing. 

We do hope that this article brings some insights into the data inaccuracies happening on the Gametize platform. We will continually work to improve our system of cached data and re-indexing without compromising the performance and efficiency of the platform.  

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That said, if you encounter any issue in this matter, feel free to contact us at support@gametize.com.