Working with results

Once a query has run, the results appear as a table. Everything on this page happens in your browser, on the results you already have — nothing is sent back to the database, so it is all instant and none of it changes the saved query.

Sorting and paging

Click a column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse it. Long result sets are paged, with the page size adjustable at the foot of the table.

Choosing which columns to show

The Columns button lists every column the query returned, each with a tickbox. Untick anything you do not want to see.

Where a query returns more than twenty columns, a Search columns... box appears at the top of that list so you can find one by name rather than scrolling.

TIP

Column choices carry through to Export to Excel and Export to CSV — the export contains what you can see, not the raw query output.

Filtering a column

Each column heading has a filter box beneath it. A column can have one filter at a time, and filters on different columns are combined with and — a row has to satisfy all of them to appear.

Filtering applies to the whole result set, not just the page you are looking at. Filtering a 5,000-row result down to 12 gives you all 12, not just the ones that happened to be on page one.

There are three ways to use the box.

Type some text. This matches anywhere in the value and ignores upper and lower case, so smith finds "Smithson" and "ARROWSMITH".

Pick a value from the dropdown. The list offers the distinct values actually present in that column. This is just a shortcut — picking one fills the text in for you.

Pick one of the bracketed options. These sit at the top of the dropdown and cover the cases plain text cannot express:

Column	Options
Any column	(Blanks), (Non Blank)
Numeric columns	(Zero), (Non Zero), (<0), (>0)

A numeric column also accepts a comparison typed directly into the box — >100, <=50, <>0 and so on. The (<0) and (>0) options are simply the two most common of those offered as one click.

Custom Filter Selection

For anything more involved than one condition, open the Custom Filter Selection dialog from the column's filter box. It builds a filter out of several conditions on that one column, combined however you need.

The toolbar

Button	What it does
+ Add Condition	Adds another condition
− Remove Condition(s)	Deletes whichever conditions are selected
'And' Group	Wraps the selected conditions in a group where all must be true
'Or' Group	Wraps them in a group where any one is enough
Toggle	Flips a group between And and Or
Ungroup	Dissolves a group, leaving its conditions in place

Because groups can sit inside other groups, you can express things like "starts with A or starts with B — and is not blank" without writing any SQL.

The conditions

Which operators are offered depends on the kind of column.

Text columns	Numeric columns
Contains	Equals
Does not contain	Does not equal
Starts with	Greater than
Ends with	Greater than or equal to
Equals	Less than
Does not equal	Less than or equal to
Is blank	Is blank
Is not blank	Is not blank

Is blank and Is not blank take no value — the box next to them is disabled, because there is nothing to type.

The preview

A plain-English summary of the filter sits at the foot of the dialog and updates as you build it, so you can check it says what you meant before applying it. That same wording is what the column's filter box shows afterwards.

Column totals

Numeric columns carry a Σ button in the filter row. It offers:

None · Sum · Max · Min · Average

The result appears in a totals row under the table, and is calculated over the filtered rows rather than everything the query returned — so filtering to one teacher and summing gives that teacher's total, not the whole service's.

Several columns can carry a total at once.