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Simple MS Access style drop-down filters for table views

While I generally prefer DbVisualiser to most other database tools, there is one feature in Microsoft Access that I do miss not having - the quick filter drop-down on each column in a table view (screenshot attached of how it looks).


This allows you to quickly add a where clause based on the distinct values that are found in the selected column.


The usage works something like this :-


In a table view, the UI would need either a button on each column header, or an additional row below the headers to open the popup control.


The control would need to perform a "select distinct" on the selected column, and retrieve a list of the potential filter choices. If there are too many distinct values (say more than 20) then the quick filter is not available.


If the list of distinct values in the column is of reasonable size, then present those values in a list, with checkboxes against each. The user can then quickly tick or untick the values to filter by.


The values are built into a where clause that filters the displayed table data.


For example - if a "code" field in a table had 10 distinct values (A-J), then clicking the quick filter would show those codes in a list. If the user ticks "B" and "C" then the table is filtered to show rows where the "code" column is either "B" or "C".


Obviously, I could just type "code = 'B'" into the Filter input at the top of the table view and get the same result, but this feature helps when browsing unfamiliar data (it shows you which values are available, which would otherwise require a separate query to look up).



Hi David,


Thanks for the suggestion. We do have plans to introduce a similar filtering capability. It would only filter on the data loaded in the grid and not perform a new database query. The reason it works only on the data loaded in the grid is that other grid related functions such as sort and quick filter use grid data only.


Would this match your request?


Regards


Roger

Hi,

Yes, that would be great :-)

Thanks,
David.

 

David,


We have just released DbVisualizer 9.5.1 with the drop-down filtering in grids.


Easiest to upgrade is to run Help->Check for Update in DbVisualizer. An alternative is to download from http://www.dbvis.com.


Regards


Roger

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