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Data as a function (read function)

Hi All,

Can anyone think of a way in which a column function could be read in by the load script? To explain: a customer has a table with, say, 9 fields. Of the 9 fields, let's say that 6 are independent data, with the remaining 3 being some sort of calculated (dependent) entry based on those other 6 fields. Now, this is normally a trivial problem to solve, if the calculated functions are static (cost per unit, sales per week, etc etc...). But this case is somewhat different.

One of these fields involves an unpredictably changing function that the user needs to maintain control over. So it's no longer (Sales * 0.75 + employees / 2) (or whatever), but (Sales * 0.80 + employees / 2) instead. Obviously these are not the real intended functions, but hopefully they illustrate my point. I would like to avoid having to get in and change my load script every time the user wants to make this change (mostly because I don't want to have to continue to support his data practices in this way) and would love to be able to read in that function as data of some sort.

Currently, the customer data is coming in as an excel spreadsheet, and he isn't willing/ able to really move away from it because he is constantly massaging his data before it's ready for production/ release. If I could create a "function" field in the table that could hold the (Sales * 0.75 + employees / 2) that could then be interpreted by the Qlik load script as an instruction, I could tie this project in a bow and move on to the next.

However, I haven't yet found anything that'll allow me to do this, and I'm reaching out to the community in the hopes that someone is sufficiently more creative than I, and that Qlik has a bit of this capability. Let's discuss how close we could get. Thanks all.

-Stefan

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