Each query is built and modified in a separate QueryEditor and the main window usually contains one or more of these. The QueryEditor contains three panels; a tree (top left), an input panel (top right) and a preview panel (bottom).The tree shows the current state of the query and can be used to change the contents of the input panel by clicking on the appropriate item; Attributes,Filters or Format. Attributes and filters can be added and removed using the appropriate input pages and the output format can be set via the format page.
The results of a query can be previewed in the preview panel, or all results can be saved to a file.
topWhen MartExplorer starts up the user is presented with a QueryEditor with some datasets to choose between. The first thing the user must do when building a query is select the dataset that the query is about.
Once the dataset is selected the user can select the attributes, filters and output format. The attribute panel is shown first but the user can switch to the filter or format panels by clicking on the Filters or Format items in the tree. The user can return to the attributes page by clicking the Attributes item in the tree.
Once the user has built the query it can be run in one of two ways. It can be executed (Execute tool bar button or File -> Execute menu item) or the results can be saved (Save tool bar button or File -> Save / Save As menu items). Executing the query causes a preview of the results to be displayed in the in the preview panel while save results causes all the results to be written to a file specified by the user. Results for the query can be saved to different files by using the File -> Save As menu item.
Attributes and filters can also be removed, the attribute order changed and the output format altered. There are two ways to delete items: (a) select the item in the tree and then press delete, (b) Remove it using the appropriate input page; for attributes this is done by unchecking the check box for the attribute in the data entry area. The order of the attributes in the results corresponds to their order in the tree. This can be changed by dragging and dropping them in the tree. Finally, the format can be changed via the Format page which can be shown by clicking on Format in the tree.
Additional queries can be created by clicking the New query button or selecting the menu item File -> New Query. Conversely the currently selected query can be removed by with File -> Close Query and all queries by File -> Close All Queries.
topBy selcting Settings -> Enable, a user may choose to enable extra options: