You have the gist of it Vers but are really asking multiple questions.
The data must make it from the device to the collector, be prepared for consumption and transfer to the indexer where it is induced to the database for queries.
Only successfully indexed data can be queried.
The workspace is a human readable rendering of the data based on queries and here is where it can get a little confusing. You see some of the data is from a database built overnight on data that was in place at the time of creation like the dashboard for example and other data is live in that it is queried at the time of render.
The farther you drill down into the data the more you are going to query on individual objects Like a device to a share to a folder to the files or a Domain to users /groups to the individual. That will be live data you actually have to hit the database to render. The larger the database the more resources are utilized and thus the slower it renders.
There are ways to force calculations of the overnight static data through different jobs or the console.
For example to calculate the Dashboard currently (note it could take hours) you would ask for a calculation to occur.
Click on the Settings Tab, then Under Global Settings use the Advanced Analytics in the left frame and choose the Compute Now button on the configuration page.
hope that helps
Pix
