Filtering and sorting

Opening the tree view window automatically loads whole database contents, up to level specified through ‘Options’ form. For large databases this might be a time consuming process as the whole database has to be loaded and inspected. There is a mechanism built into the program that allows the data presented to be filtered. Clicking the ‘Filter’ toolbar button on the Tree view window brings a filter design screen. After conditions are set and the ‘Apply’ button pressed the filter screen is removed and only the data fulfilling the specified conditions are displayed in the database tree view window. It is possible to show all the data again by pressing the ‘All’ filter button. This action clears all conditions and displays all the database data. The condition set for the last filtering process is retained during the program run and is shown the next time the filter window is opened.

Filtering conditions can be set in different ways depending on type of data being selected. Text data (material and sample names) may be selected from the combo box list and/or edited. It is possible to use wildcards ‘*’ and ‘?’. Measurement types and computing methods may be selected from appropriate lists. Temperature and date may be set as starting and ending values in format set in the Windows environment (they affect a decimal separator for numbers and a field separator and order for dates). Leaving any of the fields empty means that every value within the corresponding field is accepted. For fields such as Magnetic Field, Pressure and Illumination no fixed values may be checked; only if the selected field is significant or not (the ‘Don’t care’ check box).

The same filter window is used to set sorting options. Option groups with the ‘?’, ‘Asc’ and ‘Desc’ options commands sorting, where ‘?’ stands for insertion order, ‘Asc’ for ‘Ascending’ and ‘Desc’ for ‘Descending’. Sorting may be applied together with filtering conditions.