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"Fewer criteria" by choice


Petri

Question

While the query composing engine for worksheet databases is very good as comes to defining a new query, it falls flat when changing one.

The criteria are listed in a fixed sequence and saying "Fewer" deletes the last one, not the one you want to get rid of. Let's assume one wants to exclude a layer from a query. In this process one first has to delete several other criteria, then recreate those.

I can do it. Islandmon can do it. I hate doing it. Joe Average can't do it.

Can we please have tick boxes or something to define which criterion or criteria we want to delete.

An "advanced" mode would also be welcome, to define ANDs and ORs arbitrarily. How about SQL? MapInfo has a very good SQL query builder. ArchiCAD has SQL, too.

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Checkbox or the equivalent is a great idea. Seems to me also that there should be a more technically accurate term available from a pulldown list before each criterion condition: AND, OR, AND NOT. A AND B selects objects that satisfy both A and B. A OR B selects objects that satisfy either A or B. A AND NOT B selects objects that , well, you know.

One of the problems I think VW is trying to solve is that the casual use of "and" in ordinary conversation can mean "OR" as used in programming. By automatically supplying the "OR" when a user selects "More Choices," the user will be educated and the technically knowledgeable can easily edit the "OR" to an "AND" if desired. By supplying "AND" with the selection "Fewer Choices," we could then edit that to "AND NOT", another possible interpretation of "Fewer Choices."

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To Joe Average, such a pulldown list would read WHAT. That's why I suggested the advanced mode, e.g. SQL.

Petri, love that WHAT.

But I was thinking of that pull-down menu as an advanced, or at least intermediate, utility. Just out of curiosity, what would a SQL-based mode be like? I don't have any experience with SQL, but isn't it like most other languages when it comes to logical statements?

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Pete,

There is of course a hidden agenda here: I'd like to be able to connect to external databases and having "internal" SQL would be one step to that direction.

(Whoops, it's no longer hidden!)

Why? Well, take the new Plant Database. As I've reported, the Plant tool does not use the database but text files generated by the database. If the database is updated, one has to also remember to regenerate the text files - which can only be done from VW & the Plant tool. Not going to happen in real world.

Otherwise I don't care what syntax is used as long as can be used & works - and is a bit "hidden" from Joe. The current syntax is, I think, even more cryptic than SQL.

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