OR-selections in sheet ojects

[#1]

Hi,

In the simplifield table below, customers may belong to any of three diffrent groups - Cat_a, Cat_b or Cat_c.

All combinations are possible, YYY, NNN, YNY etc.

Selections like Cat_a="N" and Cat_b="Y" and Cat_c="N" works fine from listbox objects:

But how do I make selections like Cat_a="N" or Cat_b="Y" or Cat_c="N"? Is it possible to do that from sheet objects?

I'm stuck. Any advice are welcome!

Anders

[johnw]

Generally speaking, you can't do that. Selections in one field are OR. Selections in multiple fields are AND. However, we could take advantage of that to kluge together a solution. You just need to put all of your selections in one field. There is probably a better solution, and I'm probably going to feel stupid when I think of it or someone else posts it, but so you aren't left with NO options until then, here's an example of what I'm saying:

RawData:
LOAD * INLINE [
ID,A,B,C
1,Y,N,N
2,N,Y,N
3,Y,N,Y
4,Y,Y,Y
5,Y,N,N
6,N,N,N
7,Y,Y,Y
];
OrTable:
LOAD ID,'A=' & A AS Cat RESIDENT RawData;
CONCATENATE (OrTable) LOAD ID,'B=' & B AS Cat RESIDENT RawData;
CONCATENATE (OrTable) LOAD ID,'C=' & C AS Cat RESIDENT RawData;

[johnw]

Here's a more user-friendly though also more complicated solution. Rather than put all of the selections in a single field, we handle EVERYTHING in the data model. Since the data model is implementing the OR, the OR table can get quite large. In this case, we have 7 IDs with 3 fields with 2 values each, for up to 7 * 2^3 rows. This will obviously be impractical for large numbers of fields or large numbers of values in each field. But if it's only a few fields with a few values, and your raw data table isn't TOO huge, it should be workable.

I'm fairly confident that the creation of the OR table could be written as a loop of some sort, and there's a much more efficient way to get distinct values of a field. I may upgrade the example later, as this question comes up every now and again. I'm still hoping there's a better solution, as this one has significant weaknesses (complexity, required RAM).

[#4]

Thanks for your time, John.

Yes, its a HUGE table, several millions rows ant a lot of fields...

I'll test some modifications in the data model.

Thanks again!

Anders