Importing Filters Into Your Queries

Graf-FX has been setup so that you can utilise the power of Microsoft Access's Filtering techniques in your data mining. This only applies to the Access 95 and 97 versions of Graf-FX.

An imported filter is shown in the example below.

When you turn the import filter toggle on, all data mining queries will include this filter in addition to all other data mining drilldowns. The first level drilldown would produce a SQL query with the filter as follows.

Select ProductName ,Sum(Sales) as SumSales,Sum(Budgets) as SumBudgets from zSales_Demo where ( ((zSales_Demo.ProductName="Cola"))) group By ProductName;

So how do you add a Filter.

First you need to select the table or query and then choose the following button

This will open your table or query in READONLY mode. For a Filter By Example, choose a data item in the table that you would like to filter on (in the following example we have selected the region of Brisbane). Right Click in this field to bring up the Filtering Choices and choose Filter By Example.

This brings up only records that have Brisbane in them as follows

Now close the table by selecting the Cross in the right hand corner of the window. Access will then prompt you to save the design which you Choose Yes.

What this confusing message actually does is store the current filters that you have employed on the table or query and any sort ordering that you have undertaken. The next time you were to open the table/query, the data would be sorted as you last sorted it. You can re-deploy the filter but clicking on the filter button. After saying Yes to this prompt, you will return to the launchpad form. Now toggle the filter import button to On by clicking on the filter button

This brings the filter into the primary filter box. If you like you can hand edit the filter to add selections of your choice. This primary filter forms part of an SQL where statement to limit the data and if you hand edit the filter, it must conform to all the rules of a where statement.