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This page is for data modellers and application designers who need to work with data in tables.

Overview

Use the 

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attributes properties to specify the characteristics of the

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data in a

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column.

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This setting is not available from the repository browser. It opens from:

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  You can open attribute properties from:

  • the repository. Attributes are listed under their table.
  • the Table properties → Attributes section
  • other attribute lists. 

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Basic Settings

FieldDescription
Name

Enter the name of the attribute.

Tip

PhixFlow recognises the attribute name UID as a unique identifier for a record. As records are added, PhixFlow automatically increments the UID value.


Type

Select the

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type

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of data this attribute contains; see Understanding Data Types.

  • String

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  • Bigstring
  • Integer
  • Float
  • Decimal
  • Date
  • Datetime
  • Graphic
  • TrueFalse

Length

This field is available when Type is String.

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By default strings are 50 characters long. Optionally specify a different string length of between 1 and 4000.

For strings longer than 4000 characters, set a Type of Bigstring

Precision

This field is available when Type is Integer. Enter the maximum number of digits allowed in whole numbers. By default, integers are 10 digits long. Optionally specify a different integer precision of between 1 digit and 38 digits.

Significant FiguresThis field is available when Type is Decimal. Enter the maximum number of total digits for decimal numbers.  By default decimals have 10 significant figures.


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To specify numbers must have two digits before and after the decimal point, such as 12.34, enter:

Significant Figures  4

Decimal Places  2



Decimal Places

This field is available when Type is Decimal. Enter the maximum number of digits allowed after the decimal point. By default, decimals have 2 decimal places.

This must be less than the number of significant figures.

Local

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 to keep both

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table data and any result of using it in a calculation. 

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 if you need to

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use the attribute in a

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calculation, but you do not need to keep the result.

Indexed

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 to prevent this attribute being indexed in the PhixFlow database.

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 to index this attribute in the PhixFlow database.

To improve performance, index an attribute when the table has a large data set and an output pipe from the table uses this attribute to:

  • filter the data
  • sort or group the data.
Primary Key

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 indicates this attribute is a primary key. This means it contains a unique identifier for every record in the table. 

Foreign Key
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 indicates this attribute is a foreign key. This means and ERD links this attribute to a primary key attribute in an other table; see Understanding ERDs.
Display Name
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 indicates the name of this attribute is used as the label rather than the primary key attribute name.
Order

The order of the attributes in the

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table.

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Attribute expressions are evaluated in this order. 

This is important when you need to use the results of a calculation in another attribute:

  • either in its expression
  • or in a $ variable

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  • .

In the attribute list, the attribute that calculates the result must come before the attribute that requires the result.

ExpressionThe expression used to generate the attribute value. This is written as

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and expression; see Expressions and PhixScripts. It must evaluate to a single value, of the type specified in the Type field.

Advanced

FieldDescription

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Filter conditions are
case-independent by default

Available when Basic Settings → Type is String or Bigstring.

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To improve performance, index an attribute when the stream has a large data set and an output pipe from the stream uses this attribute to:

  • filter the stream data
  • sort or group the stream data.

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 to use filters that are case-sensitive.

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tick
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 to set new filter conditions on this attribute to be case-insensitive by default. The filter window → Ignore Case check box inherits this setting; see Filters on Data Views. For case-insensitive filters, there is no difference if the attribute is also indexed. 

Note
This option affects the behaviour of filters for PhixFlow instances running on Oracle or MariaDB (MySQL) databases.
For PhixFlow instances running on a SQL Server database, filters are always case-independent.


Key

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 for in-memory table, to specify that this field is not a key value.

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 for in-memory

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table, to specify that this field will be used as a key value. 

Translate Values 
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Available when Basic Settings → Type is String or Bigstring.

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 to ignore this attribute when translating text in PhixFlow (the default).

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 to include this attribute when translating text that appears in PhixFlow. To be translated, the attribute text must be included in a translation table; see Translating an Application Interface and Translation Table.

Cache Key

Enter an expression to be evaluated for each

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record

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in the

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table . The expression can:

  • either use the value of this attribute
  •  or calculate a different value

Once calculated, the cache key value persists throughout subsequent

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calculation, rather than being created from scratch for each

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record as normal. This allows you to keep track of the calculation as it progresses.

This means you can use a "persistent" attribute value in other expressions. 

Access Permissions

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This grid is available if All Users Can View Data is not ticked.

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Apply aAll stream attributes have a type. The default is string.

Once the stream has data, the attribute type can only be changed if the database allows the change. this is database dependent. You will see an error if your change is not allowed. If the stream has no data then any change in attribute type is possible.

String

Apply a string type to sequences of characters, such as letters, numerals, symbols and punctuation marks. By default string attribute types have a default length of 50. However you can configure a minimum length of 1 and a maximum length of 4000.

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Apply a bigstring type to text strings over 4000 characters long. Bigstring is a different data type to string and has some restrictions on filtering, sorting and aggregation.

For PhixFlow instances that use an Oracle database, bigstrings cannot be sorted or aggregated. On Oracle bigstrings may only be filtered with the conditions:

  • (not) contains
  • is (not) null
  • (not) starts with
  • (not) ends with.

The maximum bigstring size can be configured in System Configuration → System Tuning → Maximum Bigstring Size.

Integer

Apply an integer type to whole numbers (not a fractions or decimals) that can be positive, negative, or zero. The number of digits in an integer indicates its precision.

  • The default precision is 10 digits
  • The minimum precision is 1 digit
  • The maximum precision is 38

 If you store a number with decimal places as an integer it will be truncated.

Float

Apply a float type to non-integer numbers with an undefined level of precision.

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Apply a decimal type to non-integer numbers with a set level of precision. Decimals have a specific number of:

  • significant figures: the total number of digits stored, 
  • decimal places: the number of digits after the decimal place.

The maximum number of integer digits is therefore the significant figure minus the decimal places. By default, decimals have 10 significant figures and 2 decimal places, and therefore 8 integer digits.

If the number of integer digits present in a decimal field exceeds the specified format, running analysis will fail and PhixFlow will report an error.

If the number of decimal digits present in a decimal field exceeds the specified format, PhixFlow will round to the required precision. For example, if a data record includes the number 12.3456, but the decimal type can have 4 significant figures and 2 decimal places, PhixFlow records 12.35.

Note

Ensure your decimal type has the number of decimal places you need for your data. Once the data is loaded into PhixFlow, you will not be able to recover excess decimal places.

Date

Apply a date type to representations of a calendar day. Word formats, such as Tuesday the fourteenth of February are not recognised. However, three letter month abbreviations are recognised, for example: 14 Feb 2019.

The following date formats, have:

  • y represents year digits
  • M represents month digits or MMM represents three letters
  • d represents day digits
  • separators can be forward slash / hyphen - or a space.

Recognised Date Formats

  • the international standard format has not separators and is yyyyMMdd, for example 20190214. 
  • the following variations (examples shown with space separators).

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Datetime

Apply a datetime type to representations of a day and a time. It cannot be used to represent a time alone.

Datetimes can have any of the above date formats followed by a space separator and HH:mm:ss. for example MM/dd/yy HH:mm:ss represents a datetime such as 02/14/19 15:35:06.

  • H represents hour digits (24 hour)
  • m represents minute digits
  • s represents second digits
  • time separators are colons :

The international datetime uses a full stop/period as a separator between the date and time, yyyyMMdd.HHmmss, for example 20190214.15:35:06.

Note

PhixFlow recognises date and datetime formats, but does not recognise time-only formats, for example HH:mm:ss. When a database collector loads TIME data, it therefore sets the string data-type.

Graphic

Is this still available?

TrueFalse

Apply a TrueFalse type to fields that can have the values true or false.

The values that are saved as true are:

  • any number other than 0
  • for a list: all items in the list are true
  • the following case-insensitive strings
    • true
    • t
    • yes
    • y.

The values that are saved as false are:

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