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ArturoMuñoz
Employee
Employee

Dear Qlik friends & family,

 

I’m very pleased to announce that one of our very favorite functions has been finally upgraded with a nice and longtime requested functionality. Aggr() virtual table is now sortable!

 

Note: For those of you not familiar with what Aggr() is and what can do for you, please review the following materials:

 

 

Despite the fact that we have been able to do some crazy stuff with Aggr(), every time we wanted to explore the possibilities of inter-record or range functions we faced a wall, Aggr() array of values couldn’t be sorted by any means. You couldn’t control how the data was ‘stored’ in the aggr() virtual table (load order by default) making it hardly usable for a variety of cases such as cumulative calculations, inter-record and range calculations, etc.

 

Aggr syntax used to be like:

 

    Aggr({SetExpression}[DISTINCT] [NODISTINCT ] expr, dim{, dimension})

 

What's new?

 

From now on, we count in with a brand new Aggr() chart function that allows us to sort the resulting array (both in Qlik Sense 2.2 and QlikView 12*). The magic happens in the new StructuredParameter.

 

Syntax is now as following:

 

    Aggr({SetExpression}[DISTINCT] [NODISTINCT ] expr, StructuredParameter{, StructuredParameter})

 

A StructuredParameter is a combination of a dimension, and optionally the all new sorting method.

 

StructuredParameter syntax is as follow:

 

     1 StructuredParameter:  (FieldName, (NUMERIC, ASCENDING))

     2 StructuredParameters: (FieldName,(Field2Name,(FREQUENCY,DESCENDING)))

 

An Aggr() array can contain virtually anything so you have to specify what data type will be sorted within the array of data (numeric, text, frequency or Load_Order) and the sort criteria, basically ASC or DESC. I strongly recommend you to check the Aggr() help page and get familiar with the new syntax.

 

Real life example

 

Please read this blog post to discover a real usage scenario.

 

(...) I needed to capture the percentage and number of the gains and losses in a KPI object(...) In order for the Aggr() function to work as I expected, I needed to make sure the MonthYear field was sorted properly in ascending order so I handled this in my script.  Note that if the MonthYear field was not in ascending order, the Above() function may not always return the previous month thus returning the wrong results.

 

Now, to solve Jennell's dilemma we could simply use Aggr() avoiding any extra steps such as sorting the data in the script and making our calculation fully dynamic.

 

    max(aggr(sum(Members)-above(Sum(Members)), (MonthYear,(NUMERIC, ASCENDING))))

 

I would love to hear usage cases scenarios from you in the comments area. Where you guys plan to use this new capability?.

 

Enjoy Qliking,

AMZ

 

*Yes, it also works on QV12. Just ignore the syntax errors you will see in QlikView function editor.

 

UPDATED: For those of you looking for an expression as sorting parameter, good news, please check out HIC postRecipe for a Pareto Analysis – Revisited
57 Comments
nicolett_yuri

Wow!

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18,353 Views
Not applicable

Great feature.

0 Likes
18,353 Views
dirk_konings
Creator III
Creator III

Great!

0 Likes
18,353 Views
IAMDV
Luminary Alumni
Luminary Alumni

Great stuff! Thank you.

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18,353 Views
Not applicable

Nice! This would have saved me a lot workarounds in the past...

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swuehl
MVP
MVP

That's great news, Arturo!

I've used aggr() sometimes for accumulations (full or rolling), and I always needed to ensure the right load order for the last aggr() dimension.

It would have been not great, but awesome news if we could use a sort by expression, like Sum(Value).

This would allow to answer questions like "how many customers make 80% of my sales" without having to use triggers, alternate states and pareto select actions.

Two more questions:

- Any reason why there are so many synonyms for the sort order criteria? Just wondering why.

- I noticed that the {SetExpression} now actually seems to work (AFAIR, it hasn't worked in older versions, though it's in the syntax help for ages). That's a very recent change, too, right?

18,353 Views
Anonymous
Not applicable

Nice!  Can we fix Distinct Load now so it only applies to the specified table?  Today was about the 4th time that I spent at least an hour wondering why my data no longer made since because I joined or concatenated a table that was using Distinct.

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15,988 Views
stevedark
Partner Ambassador/MVP
Partner Ambassador/MVP

This is going to be really helpful for doing some more advanced Top N tables.  I'm looking forward to putting it into practice.

15,988 Views
Oleg_Troyansky
Partner Ambassador/MVP
Partner Ambassador/MVP

Awesome new feature, thanks for sharing!

0 Likes
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phaneendra_kunc
Partner - Specialist III
Partner - Specialist III

Finally....

It will solve lot of my problems in ranking, Top, Deciles, etc....

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15,988 Views