Hi. I'm looking at purchase wpDataTables for the purposes of presenting financial data metrics to an audience of software executives and enabling them to filter and present the data interactively. This data will be initially stored in Excel tables.
What we analyze are 10 key financial metrics for 100 publicly held SaaS firms. We measure revenue per employee, sales and marketing as a % of sales, R&D as a % of sale, G&A as a % of sales, etc. We typically provide a three year look at these numbers.
I have attached two sample table for you to examine. This table represents two approaches to how we organized our data.
One way to display this data is in a single large table and filter it down to a subset of the desired data for viewing. Of course, that means showing a very large table and slicing it down. This looks doable with your product, but is awkward.and I'm not sure how practical this is for smartphones and tablets.
The second approach is the one typically used when working with Excel; we break the data into a tabbed worksheet. I'm not sure how your product deals with this and how the filtering can be accomplished.
I understand that it may require an expert in product configuration to accomplish what we want and would be happy to discuss this work with a qualified organization. But first I need to find out if this out of scope for the product. It may suitable only for fairly small datasets.
We also need to understand how to manage uploading the data into wpDataTables. Most WordPress table systems are very limited in this respect. Your product works with SQL tables, but we need to understand how much massaging needs to be done before the data can be uploaded and then how it will display.
We would like to keep as much of this processing and display within a WordPress format.
The second approach is not possible with wpDataTables, like you assumed. There are some options, though.
You can have one Master table where all data will be stored, and then display filtered data in a few other tables, that would act as those separate sheets in Excel. This can be achieved with SQL Query based tables by querying the original, master table, but entering some conditions to display only parts of it.
Another option would be with filters on that one master-table. If you use SQL based tables, the plugin can support tables with millions of entries (depending on your server performance and hosting plan, of course).
The data can be updated through PHPMyAdmin, by simply importing new data into the table from there; manually adding the data one by one row in Standard view of wpDataTables; manually adding a range of cells in Excel-View of wpDataTables. There's no updating data by uploading existing external files (Excel, CSV, etc) at the moment, but our developers are working on implementing this in the future.
Manual tables are stored in the database exactly like you see them in wpDataTables, row for row, column for column, and with a regular query "SELECT * FROM databaseTable" you can see the database table exactly as it is stored in the database.
The plugin can contain complex queries, of course, but there are some issues with them - for example filtering, sorting and search may not work correctly with those. A workaround would be to create a VIEW in the database, call it "view1" for example and then create a table with a query like "SELECT * FROM view1".
We can break this down one step at a time if you decide to go with wpDataTables. Please feel free to play around with our sandbox site to see how the plugin works, and also - if you have any questions or issues, feel free to ask.
Hi, Aleksandar. Thank you for your response! I have a further follow up question. I note you have introduced a new capability of "hiding" a column via a filter. In view of my question, what is the utility of this functionality?
I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand your question here.
You can hide a column from its settings, or with custom CSS, but if you need to use our filters and hooks, you need to do that yourself, as it's not included in the provided support which only refers to advice.
Hi. I'm looking at purchase wpDataTables for the purposes of presenting financial data metrics to an audience of software executives and enabling them to filter and present the data interactively. This data will be initially stored in Excel tables.
What we analyze are 10 key financial metrics for 100 publicly held SaaS firms. We measure revenue per employee, sales and marketing as a % of sales, R&D as a % of sale, G&A as a % of sales, etc. We typically provide a three year look at these numbers.
I have attached two sample table for you to examine. This table represents two approaches to how we organized our data.
One way to display this data is in a single large table and filter it down to a subset of the desired data for viewing. Of course, that means showing a very large table and slicing it down. This looks doable with your product, but is awkward.and I'm not sure how practical this is for smartphones and tablets.
The second approach is the one typically used when working with Excel; we break the data into a tabbed worksheet. I'm not sure how your product deals with this and how the filtering can be accomplished.
I understand that it may require an expert in product configuration to accomplish what we want and would be happy to discuss this work with a qualified organization. But first I need to find out if this out of scope for the product. It may suitable only for fairly small datasets.
We also need to understand how to manage uploading the data into wpDataTables. Most WordPress table systems are very limited in this respect. Your product works with SQL tables, but we need to understand how much massaging needs to be done before the data can be uploaded and then how it will display.
We would like to keep as much of this processing and display within a WordPress format.
I look forward to responses to our request.
Hello Rick
Thank you for your interest in our plugin.
The second approach is not possible with wpDataTables, like you assumed. There are some options, though.
You can have one Master table where all data will be stored, and then display filtered data in a few other tables, that would act as those separate sheets in Excel. This can be achieved with SQL Query based tables by querying the original, master table, but entering some conditions to display only parts of it.
Another option would be with filters on that one master-table. If you use SQL based tables, the plugin can support tables with millions of entries (depending on your server performance and hosting plan, of course).
The data can be updated through PHPMyAdmin, by simply importing new data into the table from there; manually adding the data one by one row in Standard view of wpDataTables; manually adding a range of cells in Excel-View of wpDataTables. There's no updating data by uploading existing external files (Excel, CSV, etc) at the moment, but our developers are working on implementing this in the future.
Manual tables are stored in the database exactly like you see them in wpDataTables, row for row, column for column, and with a regular query "SELECT * FROM databaseTable" you can see the database table exactly as it is stored in the database.
The plugin can contain complex queries, of course, but there are some issues with them - for example filtering, sorting and search may not work correctly with those. A workaround would be to create a VIEW in the database, call it "view1" for example and then create a table with a query like "SELECT * FROM view1".
We can break this down one step at a time if you decide to go with wpDataTables. Please feel free to play around with our sandbox site to see how the plugin works, and also - if you have any questions or issues, feel free to ask.
Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Vuković
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Hi, Aleksandar. Thank you for your response! I have a further follow up question. I note you have introduced a new capability of "hiding" a column via a filter. In view of my question, what is the utility of this functionality?
rick
Hi again Rick
I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand your question here.
You can hide a column from its settings, or with custom CSS, but if you need to use our filters and hooks, you need to do that yourself, as it's not included in the provided support which only refers to advice.
Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Vuković
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables