Editing the Criteria behind Virtual Fields

Hello Group Members,

 

We often need to append Virtual Fields to an IDEA database to perform a calculation, to prove a calculation or to sanitise/convert field type of native data within IDEA to make the data ready for further analysis thereby meeting our end analysis objective. An example - a master file has the field “Name” where you have two sample names in the database within IDEA as “Mr. Eric Brown - London” and the same name appearing in another row as “Eric brown” only. While both of these records are duplicates it’s sheer variability of text will preclude a Duplicate Key Detection within IDEA.

 

So we can append a Virtual Character Field in IDEA to clean up the above field “Name” using a combination of @Functions in IDEA like @compif with @isini and @split. Now if we do not get the desired result in the first application of the Criteria within the Equation Editor, we can go back to the Criteria again and edit the same since it is a Virtual Field. But this facility of Criteria edit is only available for Virtual Fields. It would not work for normal fields like say Character Fields appended. 

 

So always let’s make it a sure point to append Virtual Fields where the need arises to ensure quick edit of the underlying Criteria to the Field in the future. Also Field Append performed in an IDEA database can be retrieved through Field Manipulation by simply double clicking anywhere inside the IDEA database and not Edit - ReRun Task.

 

Best Regards

 

Group Admin Team