New procedures available on the Database Exchange

For anybody who’s interested, I’ve just uploaded a heap of stuff to the Database Exchange (accessed via the Help menu):

Custom arrays and strings: Sixteen custom statements and their matching functions, operating on arrays and strings. Several of these are in response to old requests.

Custom matrices: No, NOT Matrix SuperObjects, these are for mathematical matrices - 13 custom statements to do anything you can think of.

Custom maths: Seven maths-related custom statements and their matching functions.

Custom navigation: Ten custom statements and two custom functions handling navigational problems on a spherical earth and on a defined spheroid, the latter with 5 mm accuracy over any distance.

Accelerated lookup: Allows lookups between databases of unlimited size.

Button converter: Fixes the problem of Panorama X’s poor conversion of Panorama 6 push buttons in forms.

Crosstab emulator: Generates crosstabs which exactly mirror those produced by Panorama 6.

Number cruncher: A suite of procedures which perform a range of arithmetical operations on numbers of any magnitude. That really does mean any magnitude - there is no limit to the size of numbers that can be input or output.

Gary Yonaites also has some really cool stuff there - it’s worth a look.

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It beats the hell out of no cross tab at all, and thanks very much for spending the time to construct this. But I still look forward to the return of the feature as it was built into Pan6, for a number of reasons. My database contains records all the way back to 1995, but I generally only show about the last five years, unless I have to have an ancient piece of information for some atypical reason. In 6, a cross tab only generated information from what was SELECTED to be shown, so I only saw what I needed without having to go through the extra time needed to compile the information, only to hide most of it. If your database could be amended to show “as currently selected in database to be cross tabbed” it would be, I think, a major improvement, especially inasmuch as I assume this needs to be regenerated when new information is entered into the database of origin, does it not?

I’ve been using this 3-database set (YES, I’d like to also see the return of “sets” - very convenient) for over two decades, and in that time I’ve created 35 cross tabs for it. Some I use regularly, some only during “tax season” to make certain my records match my W-2s, some rarely, and some I have no doubt I only used the one time when I created it, but I’ve never had to keep track or worry about that.

I’m a professional actor, focusing primarily on film, tv, commercials, etc., and it behooves me for any number of reasons to keep track of every session fee and residual check I ever receive, the deductions, the companies that employ me, the payroll companies that pay me (and therefore become “employers” to the IRS), and to have the ability to to display the information in different ways - hence the cross tabs, and to have them vanish from PanoramaX, when they were the primary reason I purchased Panoramawhateverthehell lo these many years ago, has been a major disappointment. So, again, thank you for creating this.

Ok. So after putzing around with this for longer than I it should have taken for the light to dawn, dawn it did. One has to make a COPY of the database with the records selected that you want to crosstab. Then you delete all unselected records, then you create the crosstab, and you get the totals that you desire from the records you want totaled, which is the result you would get with a simple selection from one of your saved crosstabs from the view menu in Pan6. Hang onto that crosstab as long as you want to view that specific moment in the life of the data, but it makes no sense to save it after you alter the crosstabbed data, as it is no longer valid. Unless there is a command of which I am unaware that would make the new crosstab recalculate itself based upon any changes that may have been made to the database being crosstabbed (which exists in #6), this procedure essentially creates a one-time analysis, which is worlds better than no analysis, but still a time consuming (relatively, certainly) workaround to the method in dear ol’ Pan6 which I will miss until it returns.

I DO understand that “revert to saved” or “browse all versions” should make me feel carefree about not bothering to make a copy before deleting 90% of the data I’ve entered over the past quarter of a century, but since I don’t clone my drive nightly, and since I’ve had Time Machine software or my router or my TM drive decide to take a break for awhile and not mention it to me, probably because they didn’t want to worry an old guy, it’s not something I’m ever going to do when I can work on a copy. Which I’m now going to delete so I don’t get confused and accidentally enter the next three checks sitting here into it instead.

It happens…