Using context sensitive features

Using context sensitive features

Overview

The most of the features are context sensitive. This means that the functionality can't be found behind menu items and toolbar buttons. But if you select a node and you have some other nodes added to the context before the available features will be available.

This different style of user interface philosophy give us the chance to keep the user interface simple without many menu items or configuration popups.

Simple context features

At the left side of Adele you will find a tree with nodes and subnodes. If you select one node the toolbar button on top will be changed. Some often used features are placed here as toolbar buttons (e.g. import features, show statistical information or the distribution of values).

Opening the context menu of a node by a right mouse click will show the available features for this node.

Complex context features

Every node has a context menu „add to context“. With this menu item you keep this node for later operations. After adding the node to the context a special symbol will be displayed. The status line will inform you about the current status of the context.

After you have added a node to the context an additional menu item „remove from context“ will be available.

Depending on the current context the features are available. Keep in mind that the current node will be added automatically to the context for the current menu operation. If you cancel the context menu or execute some context sensitive feature this last node will be deleted.

One example:
The column node „DATE“ was added to the context before. If you open the context menu of column node „VALUE“ you will find context sensitive features for your current context. This is the column „DATE“ and the column „VALUE“ (automatically added for exactly one operation). The first column is a datetime field and the second a number field. For this special context the feature „pie chart“ is valid. You find this feature in the context menu as „Charts – pie chart“.

Keep in mind that the sort order of the nodes added to the context will be interpreted within the features. For example the bar chart feature will be interprete the first context item as category on the X axis. The most features are respecting the current filter status. If you use the same context with different filter configurations you should get different results with the same feature and context.

Available feature types

All features can be grouped by a type. The following types are available at the moment:
1) charts - visualize the data with different kind of charts
2) grouping - group the data depending on the data type (e.g. interprete a date field as week)
3) transforming - transform the data to another type or value (e.g. interprete a number as text with leading 0)
4) analyzing - analyze the data for different aspects (e.g. basket analysis, finding doublettes)

Tipps and tricks

You can use drag and drop operations for building a context. Try to drag a column node and drop it to another column node. Both nodes will build the new context.

The context will be used by other features to define that context items should be used.
Example 1:
Merging 2 tables: what columns of table 1 should be added to table 2

Example 2:
A set operation of to tables: what columns of both tables will be used as key columns