Tables

Table components

Tables or table components are an important part of the Charta Software Environment. The reason for this is that it is a good way to organize and visualize lists of data. By showing data structured in rows and columns you can easily get transparent overviews by sorting and filtering.

• Sort
• Filter
• Group
• Pivot tables

Sorting is a very powerful and intuitive way to view data given in a table. Every table component supports standard sorting by pressing Spacebar on a selected column. Selecting a column can be achieved by pressing Ctrl + Up from within a table cell. By successively selecting columns, the sorting is first based on the last selected column, and within that result the sorting is based on the previous sorting. So for example, you have a table with two columns: "First name" and "Last name". If you start with selecting "First name" and sort, the rows will be in alphabetical order based on the first names. If you then select "Last name" and sort, the rows will be in alphabetical order based on the last names, and if the last names are equal the sorting based on the first names will be used again. Sorting can take quite some time if there is a lot of data in the table, filtering might be a better option in this case.

By filtering a table on certain values occurring in the cells of a column, a quick selection of important rows can be made. This comes in handy when you are looking for specific values in a table. Every table can be filtered by pressing Ctrl + F on a selected column (press Ctrl + Up from within a table cell). An extra row will appear at the top of the table. In this row you can enter a filter condition for every column. If nothing is entered no filter will be applied for that column. If something is entered, all rows from the table will be shown for which the values in the column start with the given filter condition.

Sorting and filtering are useful when you are looking for certain rows, but if you are more interested in statistics using the whole table, than grouping might be a good option. By pressing Ctrl + G a screen will open in which you can define a grouping for the table. The screen contains three parts:

• The result: the selected columns that should be grouped + the columns with the wanted statistics ("Row grouping table")
• The columns to group: the columns for which you want the values to be grouped ("Group on columns")
• The statistic columns: the columns for which you want the statistics to be calculated ("Aggregate on columns")

In the "Group on columns" a number of columns can be selected by checking them. The unique combination of values for those columns will be shown immediately in the result. Then, fields defining the statistics can be added in the "Aggregate on columns" table. This is done by first adding a row to the table (press Insert from within the table). Now in the column "Column" the column to use for the statistics can be entered (the exact column name for which the statistics are to be calculated) and in the column "Aggregate function" the statistical function to use can be entered (the following functions are supported for now: "Count", "Sum", "Minimum", "Average" en "Maximum").

Every table consisting of three columns can be shown as a pivot table. This can be achieved by pressing Ctrl + P. The values in the first column will now be used as headers for the rows, the values of the second column will be used as headers for the columns, and the values of the third column will be used as values for the new table.