The crosstable prefix is used to turn a cross table into a straight table, that is, a wide table with many columns is turned into a tall table, with the column headings being placed into a single attribute column.
Syntax:
crosstable (attribute field name, data field name [ , n ] ) ( loadstatement | selectstatement )
Arguments:
| Argument | Description |
|---|---|
| attribute field name | The field that contains the attribute values. |
| data field name |
The field that contains the data values. |
| n |
The number of qualifier fields preceding the table to be transformed to generic form. Default is 1. |
A crosstable is a common type of table featuring a matrix of values between two or more orthogonal lists of header data, of which one is used as column headers. A typical example could be to have one column per month. The result of the crosstable prefix is that the column headers (for example month names) will be stored in one field, the attribute field, and the column data (month numbers) will be stored in a second field: the data field.
Example:
Crosstable (Month, Sales, 2) LOAD * INLINE[
Person, Location, Jan, Feb, Mar
Bob, London, 100, 200, 300
Kate, New York, 400, 500, 600
];
Result:
| Person, | Location, | Month, | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bob, | London, | Jan, | 100 |
| Bob, | London, | Feb, | 200 |
| Bob, | London, | Mar, | 300 |
| Kate, | New York, | Jan, | 400 |
| Kate, | New York, | Feb, | 500 |
| Kate, | New York, | Mar, | 600 |
Crosstable wizard
The crosstable wizard is dialog driven method of creating the crosstable statement. This dialog is opened by clicking the Crosstable button in the Options page of the File Wizard. The crosstable wizard contains the following options:
| Field type | Description |
|---|---|
| Qualifier Fields | The number of qualifier fields that precede the fields to be transformed. |
| Attribute Field | The name of the new field that will contain all the fields (attribute values) to be transformed. |
| Data Field | The name of the new field that will contain the data of the attribute values. |
