What's considered the best table sorting indicator? - sorting

I've got a 'classic' table which has table heads with field names in it:
There are a lot of ways to display an sorting indicator in a table:
Upwards and downwards triangles after the active field name
Making field names of the active field bold/underlined
Change the color of the active field
What's considered the best method to indicate an active table field?

In my opinion using upward and downward triangles is the best way, because they are unambiguous and easy to interpret.

Related

Foundry-workshop : sorting capabilities

I build a chart with 2 layers in Workshop, the only difference is the date bucket. As far as segmentation is the same, I would like each layer being displayed with the same color.
In the chart above, you'll see 2 series: one to display the monthly evolution of a property, the second one to display the yearly average. Each series is segmented by the same object (listed in the table above, coming from an hidden filter). This is achieves by defining 2 layers, with exactly the same definition, except the X-axis: the date is bucked either monthly or yearly. The property is calculated on a monthly basis, so the monthly average bucket displays the input value, and the second chart dynamically calculates the yearly average.
The main issue is that the 2 blue lines are not related to the same object.
I also would like, as far as possible, to have only one legend, instead of one per layer. Currently, my workaround is to display in one case the code, in the second one the description.
Maybe I missed something, but I did not find any way to define precisely the chart colors: am I wrong?
Thus, I was wondering if there was any way to sort input data. The filter is based on the object's primary key, is is possible to sort the queryset accordingly ? Maybe the segmentation would be displayed in the same order and the colors match this order.
Or is there any other way to proceed?
The answer to the title's question is quite easy: actually, the segmentation is not exactly the same. In the first layer, the segmentation is based on a code, the second one on the object's name. Thus, the order is slightly different.
Then solution is: use exactly the same segmentation.
I still wonder how to manage the display: view the legend for only one layer, choose lines' colors... But it looks like it's another subject and I'll probably open a new topic.

Sorting columns of a table in Tableau

I am looking to sort the following table in Tableau by risk rating and date. For risk rating in can bethe form of Low-Medium-High or the other way round and for the date it is from earliest to latest and the other way round. I understand that Tableau does some kind of nesting from left to right such that it only sorts the leftmost column. How can I overcome that such that a user can do a sort with as little effort as possible (perhaps in the form of a button?)

Nested sorting in dimension hierarchies (Tableau)

I am working on a vizualisation in Tableau that has dimension hierarchy (Product category, product sub-category, product type etc.) sorted descending by number of orders. I want my viz to show by default only first product level (product category) sorted the same way, but give an option to drill down (using "+" on the dimension) to detailed product levels and using nested sorting (again, descending by number of orders).
superstore data sample
I tried using nested sorting option for each product level, but when I drill up and down again, the sorting is wrong again, as if it clears out. I cannot find an option to keep them fixed unless I keep all product levels visible in the viz (without drill-down option).
Does anyone know how can I do it? I tried also different ways of indexing and ranking calculations, but nothing seem to work. I know there is one option to combine hierarchy dimensions and using sorting option on them, but it keeps the viz really untidy.
Thanks in advance!
Tableau will always sort based on the left most column. With the newer nested sorting you can more easily do a secondary sorting. However, when you expand up/down hierarchies like you are noting the formatting might not be retained.
The "classic" way to do this is to create a Rank by number of orders (sounds like you were close on this one). rank(COUNT([Order ID]),'desc'). Make this a discrete measure and put it to the left of all the other dimensions.
To clean it up, you can uncheck "Show Header" on the rank pill.
And if you expand/collapse the hierarchy, it keeps the sorting... Final product:
EDIT: Here is another way to try to accomplish this. It seems to work for 3 levels but starts to break down after that. (It also didn't seem to work well on grouped dimensions.)
Expand the hierarchy to all three levels.
On each dimension, enforce a sort order of Count of Order ID Descending.

What are labels and indices in Neo4j?

I am using neo4j-core gem (Neo4j::Node API). It is the only MRI-compatible Ruby binding of neo4j that I could find, and hence is valuable, but its documentation is a crap (it has missing links, lots of typographical errors, and is difficult to comprehend). In the Label and Index Support section of the first link, it says:
Create a node with an [sic] label person and one property
Neo4j::Node.create({name: 'kalle'}, :person)
Add index on a label
person = Label.create(:person)
person.create_index(:name)
drop index
person.drop_index(:name)
(whose second code line I believe is a typographical error of the following)
person = Node4j::Label.create(:person)
What is a label, is it the name of a database table, or is it an attribute peculiar to a node?
If it is the name of a node, I don't under the fact that (according to the API in the second link) the method Neo4j::Node.create and Neo4j::Node#add_label can take multiple arguments for the label. What does it mean to have multiple labels on a node?
Furthermore, If I repeat the create command with the same label argument, it creates a different node object each time. What does it mean to have multiple nodes with the same name? Isn't a label something to identify a node?
What is index? How are labels and indices different?
Labels are a way of grouping nodes. You can give the label to many nodes or just one node. Think of it as a collection of nodes that are grouped together. They allow you to assign indexes and other constraints.
An index allows quick lookup of nodes or edges without having to traverse the entire graph to find them. Think of it as a table of direct pointers to the particular nodes/edges indexed.
As I read what you pasted from the docs (and without, admittedly, knowing the slightest thing about neo4j):
It's a graph database, where every piece of data is a node with a certain amount of properties.
Each node can have a label (or more, presumably?). Think of it as a type -- or perhaps more appropriately, in Ruby parlance, a Module.
It's a database, so nodes can be part of an index for quicker access. So can subsets of nodes, and therefor nodes with a certain label.
Put another way: Think of the label as the table in a DB. Nodes as DB rows, which can belong to one or more labels/tables, or no label/table at all for that matter. And indexes as DB indexes on sets of rows.

multicolumn index column order

I've be told and read it everywhere (but no one dared to explain why) that when composing an index on multiple columns I should put the most selective column first, for performance reasons.
Why is that?
Is it a myth?
I should put the most selective column first
According to Tom, column selectivity has no performance impact for queries that use all the columns in the index (it does affect Oracle's ability to compress the index).
it is not the first thing, it is not the most important thing. sure, it is something to consider but it is relatively far down there in the grand scheme of things.
In certain strange, very peculiar and abnormal cases (like the above with really utterly skewed data), the selectivity could easily matter HOWEVER, they are
a) pretty rare
b) truly dependent on the values used at runtime, as all skewed queries are
so in general, look at the questions you have, try to minimize the indexes you need based on that.
The number of distinct values in a column in a concatenated index is not relevant when considering
the position in the index.
However, these considerations should come second when deciding on index column order. More importantly is to ensure that the index can be useful to many queries, so the column order has to reflect the use of those columns (or the lack thereof) in the where clauses of your queries (for the reason illustrated by AndreKR).
HOW YOU USE the index -- that is what is relevant when deciding.
All other things being equal, I would still put the most selective column first. It just feels right...
Update: Another quote from Tom (thanks to milan for finding it).
In Oracle 5 (yes, version 5!), there was an argument for placing the most selective columns first
in an index.
Since then, it is not true that putting the most discriminating entries first in the index
will make the index smaller or more efficient. It seems like it will, but it will not.
With index
key compression, there is a compelling argument to go the other way since it can make the index
smaller. However, it should be driven by how you use the index, as previously stated.
You can omit columns from right to left when using an index, i.e. when you have an index on col_a, col_b you can use it in WHERE col_a = x but you can not use it in WHERE col_b = x.
Imagine to have a telephone book that is sorted by the first names and then by the last names.
At least in Europe and US first names have a much lower selectivity than last names, so looking up the first name wouldn't narrow the result set much, so there would still be many pages to check for the correct last name.
The ordering of the columns in the index should be determined by your queries and not be any selectivity considerations. If you have an index on (a,b,c), and most of your single column queries are against column c, followed by a, then put them in the order of c,a,b in the index definition for the best efficiency. Oracle prefers to use the leading edge of the index for the query, but can use other columns in the index in a less efficient access path known as skip-scan.
The more selective is your index, the fastest is the research.
Simply imagine a phonebook: you can find someone mostly fast by lastname. But if you have a lot of people with the same lastname, you will last more time on looking for the person by looking at the firstname everytime.
So you have to give the most selective columns firstly to avoid as much as possible this problem.
Additionally, you should then make sure that your queries are using correctly these "selectivity criterias".

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