Panorama has three different tools for searching for data. You’ve already seen the Find/Select dialog — now I’ll show you instant as-you-type searching using the Live Clairvoyance wizard. For this portion of the guided tour I’m going to switch to the orders table. This table contains orders submitted to this hobby shop thru a Rails web application. I already set up the local Panorama database associated with this table, which I can open by clicking on the Panorama (orange cube) icon.
Here’s the local RAM based database.
To make sure I have the latest data I’ll use the Download Data from Rails command in the Rails menu.
Searching Across All Fields
To search the orders table I’ll choose Live Clairvoyance from the Search menu. As I type text into the search box at the top of the window Panorama instantly searches all fields and displays all of the matches. When I search for houston I get some people named Houston and some people that live in the city of Houston, and even one person that lives on a street named Houston Court.
I can click on any of the matches to view and possibly edit the corresponding record in the main database window. I can also press the Select Data icon to select these records in the main database window (making all other records temporarily invisible).
Searching Based on a Boolean Formula
Another live search option is to searched based on a boolean formula. I simply click on the Formula icon (looks like a test tube) and type in the formula I want to search for. For this demo I typed in a formula earlier and saved it using the pop-up menu on the left side of the search box. This formula searches for customers with a last name that sounds like miller.
Panorama instantly searches for matching names (the soundslike operator uses the soundex phonetic matching algorithm).
Of course I don’t have to use the soundslike operator, I can type in any boolean formula I want, including compound formulas linked together with and and or. Panorama will instantly search based on any formula I enter, and the results are instantly updated as I type whenever there is a valid formula in the search box.
Continue the Tour —> Crosstabs