Panorama has more features than any one of us can ever hope to know even exist, never mind how to apply them. I still find unknown capabilities in Panorama 6 whenever I need to do some work in it - which is still pretty often.
There are many things I’ve found in Panorama X that have awed me. Frequently I’m trying to carry out some task and thinking there’s nothing for it, then discovering it was under my nose. I simply failed to comprehend how to apply it for my purposes.
So I’ll share a few of my favorites on the assumption that others don’t know about them or recognize their potential.
Wow, the speed with which I can build a complex array of data from another file. It can be used in a Text List or Matrix that updates immediately for each record to show invoices, products in inventory, or any other dataset that matches the relation.
The more I use it, the more I use it. In some uses I’ve built a large array based on some criteria, then I use LoopArray to process every element well beyond what an ordinary array formula can do. In some cases I’m creating multiple new arrays, occasionally embedding another LoopArray or two with the parent loop.
Another wow! Last week I had two immense databases that needed to be combined One was 204,000 records, the other was 130,000. I had ten fields that needed lookups to match records and apply the data. Even with a relationship set up, after 20 minutes the first lookup was only halfway through when my computer declared it was out of memory. Digging into the Help file I discovered Join Databases. (Yes I had seen it before when I had nothing for it so it had slipped my memory) Join accomplished the task in about 4 minutes.
These are wonderful for maximizing real estate on the screen. Any portion of your form can be static while selected portions can be toggled to display anything else; maybe a matrix of invoices built by RelatedArray(. It really gets fun when you realize that a Tab Panel can have other Tab Panels within it. Consider for instance a panel for Music that has sub-panels about instruments, musicians, and songs. Then another panel for Biographies with sub-panels for Current, Medical, and Familial. Yeah, these are quickly imagined topics but I’ve had enough real ones to know this is a very useful capability. Sometimes I’ve used the sub-panels for different tables of data along with a chart, each having enough variants in the configuration that one wouldn’t fit all.
If there’s some long list of something that you need to refer to often and want it fast, this is the ticket. An application I’ve used it for is to build an extensive list of ID’d folders that are within a slightly complex nested group of folders. The list consists of the ID along with its complete path. Converted to binary in a dictionary the folder path for every record in a database is instantly acquired and the folder’s contents are displayed.
Of course, there’s more and I’ll add to this list as I think of them. Maybe you have a couple of favorite things that you can share too.