Take a Tour of SuperView and see what it can do to your data:

Introduction to SuperView Getting Started Main Functionality Choose Main File Change Index – Select record Show All Records Help Record Navigation Attachments Extract File Management Catalogue of previously recorded selection criteria Selection Manipulations Select Records: Exclude Records: Select Fields: Display Average: Percentage of Total: Show Records: Display Frequency: Include Selection Consolidate

Find Group Records: Generate Histogram: Transfer Selection to Excel: Previous Selection: Next Selection: Store to Extract: File Parameters: Output Generation for Current Selection Labels: Mailmerge > Winword: Quick Report: Graphic Report: Store Selection in Extract file: Store Selection in Related Extract File: Add to existing extract file: Remove from extract file: Execute a Program: Export: Catalogue current selection criteria

SuperView provides a powerful tool for both the database professional as well as the relatively inexperienced user to:

Mine data

Select records intuitively

Catalogue selection criteria

Store the current selection in key extract files

Store the current selection to an extract file containing the unique keys of a related file.

Merge extract files and reconcile duplicate data, leaving single unique keys

View all the values of selected fields and the number of occurrences of that value.

Select records by simply marking the desired values from the list.

Clean up data contents by consolidating differently written entries such as IBM and I.B.M. and produce a consolidated entry of I B M

Produce standard output for the current selection of records:

Merge into a mail shot and distribute by email, fax and post

Generate custom designed labels

Incorporate data in the reports

Add or remove selected records to and from extract files

Export to many standard file formats

View ATTACHMENTS, such as photos, spreadsheets, powerpoint docs, word and word perfect documents etc which can be associated with an individual master record.

View the average of selected numeric fields for the current selection.

View the percentage of a particular value with respect to the total current selection and with respect to the total of that particular value in the total selection.

Group records for statistical analysis

Display results in Histograms that dynamically update when the selection criteria change.

Export the statistical data to Excel and produce Bar and Pie diagrams directly.

Export all or selected fields from the current selection to many different

Standard output formats including fixed length and delimited ascii, csv, excel.

1. When you start the program from the menu bar / program / SuperView it will display the currently opened file as shown below.

2. If the currently opened file does not possess a unique key, the system will offer to produce one for you. If you accept this offer a field will be added to the file named _gSerNo

3. If you don’t accept the offer then the programme closes and waits for you to generate a unique key yourself.

When you use this programme against a file for the first time then if this file is called “MYFILE” then a subdirectory is created called MYFILE and then a file called PARAMS is then created inside this directory.

4. You can scroll through the records using the forwards and backwards , first record and last record command buttons.

Here we will discuss the functions of the other buttons at the top of the main screen.

This will display the currently opened files for you to choose from.

By Choosing the <Open File> the system will allow you to open a file that is not in the current list.

You may locate a specific record by clicking on the INDEX button which will allow you to change the index and to select a specific value for that index.

All the indexes are displayed.

After selecting an index you will be invited to enter a search criteria.

If an exact entry is not made then the next record in sequence will be displayed.

The start-up screen has a standard structure showing all the fields of the file with the field name on the left.

If you wish to do some data-mining or selection on certain fields then simply click on those field names. When you click on the field it will become red, clicking again on that label will de-select that field and return the colour to black.

When you have selected the required fields, eg Age, Sex and Zip-Code click on the “Show all Records” button.

By Clicking on this button, a “??” will attach itself to the cursor to indicate that you are now in “context sensitive help” mode. Click on any button and the relevant part of this document will be displayed.

Click on this button again and you will return to normal operation mode.

These buttons allow you to navigate to the first record, previous record, next record and last record

The current record is considered to be the record displayed in the leftmost column.

this ICON will take you to the archive page where you can store any documentation relevant to that current record, such as photos, documents, excel spreadsheets, scanned documents, powerpoint presentations, etc...

To Add an attachment click on the Add Attachment button:

Enter a relevant date appropriate to the document being added.

Click on Search to select a relevant file to be associated with the entered description.

Write an Individual letter for the current record.- when this letter is written it will automatically be entered into the attachment list.

Please not the asterisk at the end of the line – this indicates that the file referred to exists in the path specified.

If an asterisk exists then clicking the spectacles on the relevant line will display the associated file whatever that file happens to be.

After clicking the spectacles on the line showing “Photo of patient” displays that photo:

As you will see later you can store the primary keys of selected records into extract files which will be catalogued for later use and further manipulation and selection.

The following dialogue displays previously saved extract files and the number of entries in that file.

The selection criteria that produced the selected extract file is shown in the lower part of the dialogue.

You are able to select an extract file for further manipulation by marking the relevant extract file entry and clicking OK.

Cancel returns to the previous screen.

Delete removes the entry and removes the physical extract file from the hard disk.

Merge allows you to mark more than one extract file and to combine them to produce a consolidated extract file. This de-dupes at the same time since an extract file contains the unique key of the currently opened file. When merging into a new file, this unique key will occur only once.

Name allows you to rename the extract file entry.

This displays the current Master file and the current record count based on the currently applied selection criteria.

After having made your selections you can store the selection criteria for later usage.

Click on Store and you will be asked to provide a title for the current selection and its contents and groupings. (see later sections)

If you click on Catalogue the following screen will be displayed:

This displays the title of the catalogued selection and the filter used to generate that selection.

Select Current allows you to make the selected entry current.

Delete Current allows you to delete the selected entry.

The start-up screen has a standard structure showing all the fields of the file with the field name on the left.

If you wish to do some data-mining or selection on certain fields then simply click on those field names. When you click on the field it will become red, clicking again on that label will return the colour to black.

When you have selected the required fields, eg Age, Sex and Zip-Code click on the “Show all Records” button.

You can double click on a label to both select that label and to activate the select records functionality.

Please note that certain of the command buttons have disappeared since we have now moved into a different mode, namely the mining mode as opposed to the record display mode.

The selected rows have now been converted to a horizontal histogram where each individual element represents the frequency of that value in the file.

Already you can see that the majority of the patients in this file are in the Zip-Code area of 90046, there are approximately 10% more Females than Males.

Hovering the mouse above any element will display its contents in a tool-tip eg.

A right mouse click on any of the elements including the labels will display a drop-down menu which will enable a multitude of functions

Depending on where you have clicked:

Clicking on the Field-Name (Zip) displays a slightly different list of functions.

Clicking on the Field-Name (Age) the Display Average is added to the function list since this field is a numeric field.

If you wish to select all those Patients from Zip Code 90046 who are Male and in their 50’s then click on these values.

If you wish to select a range of values then keep the mouse click down and drag the mouse across the relevant values. They will automatically be selected.

If you click on an already marked value then this will be de-selected. If you continue

With the mouse click down over other selected values then these too will be de-selected.

With the values selected then right mouse click and select the first item on the menu – Select Records. This will now show you these values only and display in the Record Count at the top, the current number of records selected.

As you see there are now only 65 records selected. You may continue homing in on the desired selection group by marking other fields and once again the Select Records function.

At any time you can mark other fields to be included in the process – just click on that field and then Right Mouse Click with or without further value selections and then Select Records will add the addition row of histographic information.

If you wish to exclude those Patients from Zip Code 90046 who are Male and in their 50’s then click on these values.

If you wish to exclude a range of values then keep the mouse click down and drag the mouse across the relevant values. They will automatically be selected.

If you click on an already marked value then this will be de-selected. If you continue

With the mouse click down over other selected values then these too will be de-selected.

With the values selected then right mouse click and select the first item on the menu – Exclude Records. This will now exclude these values from the display and the Record Count at the top will show the current number of records selected.

The 65 records have been removed from the selection resulting in 2,392 –65 = 2327 records.

You can continue to select or exclude as you so desire.

A large file such as the example used above can become cumbersome especially if you have to scroll down to see relevant fields. To allow you to reduce the display to the fields you think to be relevant in making your selections we have provided you with the facility of defining one or more display objects which are simply field selections in a field order you feel to be more logical than the default display of the fields. (This order is the order in which they were defined.)

Click on this menu item and you will be presented with the following display:

This view management screen allows you to select an already defined view or to establish a new view and to delete or modify an existing one.

The fields in the left hand list box are arranged in alphabetical order while those in the right hand list box are in the current display order, which happens to be the order in which the fields were defined.

To produce a new View fist hit Clear and then select the fields from the Fields list and insert them into the Select Fields list.

You can either mark the field and hit insert or double click the required field to insert in the Selected Fields list. Likewise you can select a field in the Selected Fields list and either hit Delete or double click that field.

You can change the order of the fields in the Selected fields list by dragging the fields to the desired order in the list.

When you hit OK you will be asked for a relevant name for this view of the file (Display Object).

Edit will allow you to modify an existing display object. By selecting the Address View and then Edit the following screen is presented:

Make whatever modifications you desire and then hit OK to store these new speicifications.

Delete will delete the currently selected display object.

All Fields cancels the current field selection and reverts back to displaying all the fields of the file in their default order.

Name allows you to modify the name of the currently selected display object.

This menu item will be active on numeric fields only.

When you right mouse click on the label you will be shown the total, the average and the record count for this field for the current selection.

For example:

Display Average on the age line will display the following:

Display Average on the PBal (Payment Balance) field line will display the following:

This menu item will be displayed on alpha fields only and will be appear on the Histogram element.

You will be shown the total, the average and the record count for this field for the current selection in addition to the percentage of that category only within the current selection.

For example:

Selecting “Percentage of Total” on the unfiltered file the following message will be displayed:

This shows the current value of the Zip Code namely 90046.

The second line shows the percentage of the current count of Zip Code 90046 in comparison to the total of Zip Code 90046 for the complete file. In this case this will 100% namely the total 1064 of 1064. Also displayed is the percentage of 90046 with respect to the total number of records in the current selection, namely 1064 of 2392 giving a percentage of 44.48%.

After applying some selection criteria, eg only 50 year olds then the following message will be displayed.

Percentage of Total after right mouse click on Zip Code 90046 will now display the following message:

Here we see that of the 298 records selected 130 are in zip code 90046.

This represents 12.22% of the total number of records in 90046 namely 130 / 1064 and 43.62% of the current selection.

This menu point will switch from the histographic view to the original record view.

Eg:

Click Show all records displays the following screen:

Whenever the view is in the Histogram mode, display frequency will display a dialogue listing all the values found for that field in the entire file and displays next to it the count of records containing that specific value.

Selecting Display Frequency on the Zip Code line will display the following:

This is not just a display. You can select one or more values from here using the standard windows conventions, to be used as selection criteria for the select or exclude records function.

After making your selections click on Include Selection.

The result of this is shown below:

This display will also allow you to consolidate any values which may be erroneous.

For example in the above display the ZIP code 900468 is wrong and really belongs to the 90048 group. To consolidate the values select the erroneous line(s) and those into which the value should be changed:

This enables you to position the list in the list box to a specific value.

Entering 92 in the requestor will automatically position you as follows:

It is often convenient to group records together in meaningful groups.

If the field is an alpha field then the program will automatically group on the first letter of the value.

If the field is a date field then if more than one year is being displayed then the grouping will be years. If less than a year but more than one month then the grouping will be months. Less than a month then the grouping will be days.

Time fields will be grouped into 24 Hour groups.

For numeric fields the programme takes the highest and lowest values and requests you to specify the maximum number of groups.

The programme will work out the best division of values that correspond best to that number of groups.

Here note that PatName is an alpha field so has been divided into groups of the first letter of that field.

Age is a numeric field and has been divided into 10 groups as requested.

Bdate is a date field and has automatically been grouped by year since more than one year is featured.

By selecting the year 1925 the following grouping is displayed:

displaying a grouping by month.

Now select just one month and the following is displayed:

displaying a grouping by day of the month.

So long as there are less than 100 values a bar histogram can be drawn.

After having selected 3 zip codes the field Age was grouped into 10 groups.

The above histogram shows the frequency of the individual bars and the lower histogram shows the percentage of the current selection for numeric fields. For alpha fields you can toggle between showing the percentage of the current selection, or the percentage of each category with respect to the total for that category for the complete file.

This histogram will update dynamically if you change the selection criteria.

You can generate histograms on any field and they will dynamically respond to the change of selection criteria.

Should you wish to do more extensive graphical presentation of your data then you can export the data to Excel and produce either a Bar Chart or a Pie Chart. Once generated you have the full power of Excel at your disposal for using any of the other graphical representations available.

You will first be asked for a file name for the Excel file. This will be stored under the excel sub-directory.

You will then be asked whether you would like a Bar or Pie Chart.

Now enter a title for the Pie Chart

The above Pie Chart is then generated.

Each time you make a new selection, the previous selection criteria are stored so that you are able to revisit previous selections.

If you have already selected a Previous Selection then the Next Selection will activate the next selection criteria and refresh the current display with those criteria.

You can write your current selection out to an extract file for later usage.

On selecting this menu item you will be asked for the title of this extract file.

This will be found for re-selection in the Extract File Catalogue.

Here you can modify the system parameters at any time.

When writing letters for selected records these documents can be distributed by email, fax or using hard-copy by post. In order to do this you must tell the system which of the fields in the file contain the email address or FAX numbers. You are requested to enter the priority order of the entered fields.

The Reference Name field identifies the field in which the system will find a reference field such as Full Name or Book Title wherever relevant.

You may also choose the language of the programme.If the chosen language is not available then English will be the default language.

Find Field allows you to select the relevant field from the current file.

Find Path currently allows you to choose the path of the current file.

OK accepts the input.

This button represents the actions you can select for the current record selection.

Selecting Labels will present you with the following pick-list:

If there exists a path to the current file in the PARAMS file then the *.sbb” files will be displayed for you to choose from.

If you select a Label Format then you will be asked to select a field on which to sort the labels.

Select a field such as Zip code or Name.

If you don’t require any particular sort order then hit Cancel.

Clicking OK on the Label Editor will print the required labels to the current printer.

Creating a winword template has to precede the use of this module.

These templates should be stored under the templates sub-directory

The following document is a typical template for the merge functions that this program offers.

Please note the following:

[TODAY] - This will print todays date.

[Address1.PATFIL] – This will print the contents of the field at this position.

{Signature} - This will prompt the user for a signature at the time the letter is being generated. If you are producing a batch of letters then you will be asked if this entry is common between all records, if so then the prompt screen will only be displayed once.

After choosing Mailmerge, you will be asked to select a template. These are the documents found in the subdirectory “templates” of the current file’s directory.

Select the relevant template and click the Select button.

You will then be asked to select a sort criteria for the letter generation.

Here, Zip has been chosen as the sort field.

The document should be titled:

At this point if there any fields in the template with curly brackets then they will be displayed here for data input.

Our current template has the Signature field in curly brackets so the following form has been generated.

On clicking OK here you are asked if this entry is the same for all selected records.

A yes here and all 4 letters will be generated.

Clicking on the attachments icon the following attachments are displayed

Clicking the spectacles on the letter that we just generated we see the following:

which shows that the date, fields and signature have been correctly generated.

If the File Path is present in the PARAMS file thenthis path will be used for selection of already specified Quick Reports

The specifications for this quick report are then displayed for either modification of acceptance.

Click OK and the report will be generated.

You will be asked to identify the directory in which to open the Graphic Report.

All the graphic reports defined in this directory will be displayed in the next choice:

After making the selection the report will be generated.

The 3 records of the current selection are outputted in the format of the chosen graphic report.

This will store the primary keys of the selected records to an extract file which you can identify using the following:

This entry will show up in the extract file catalogue:

Often enough you will be asking the sort of question – Show me all the patients who have been invoiced in a particular time period.

Or, check the history file and show me all my contacts who attended a particular seminar in the last 2 years.

Both these questions relate to 2 files connected through a relationship.

This system is able to ask questions on only one file at a time, however, this function allows these type of questions to be answered.

In principle one can make selections on one file and store the related unique keys of another file in a relevant extract file.

Firstly you will be presented the following dialogue:

When you click the Add button you will be presented with a dialog where you will have to specify the linkage between the two files.

The fields of the current file are shown on the left.

Now select a Link File by clicking the Choose Link File button.

This will now populate the second list box in the First Linkage specs with the indices of the file ACCTFIL and prepares the first list box of the second linkage with all the fields of ACCTFIL.

Now select the field in PATFIL that relates to an index in ACCTFIL, give the linkage a name and view the linkage relationship generated in the field labelled Link1.

One can build a double linkage in the same way, where any field indexed or non-indexed in the “from file” can connect to an index in the “to file”

After Selecting the relevant linkage you will be asked for the name of an extract file that will be stored against the ACCTFIL.

The display will now switch to ACCTFIL and show the records selected.

This is a display of records that were stored in the just created extract file that has been inserted into the extract catalogue for the ACCTFIL file.

Since you wish to add the current selection to an existing extract file, you will be first asked to identify that extract file:

The selected extract file currently contains 73 records, by adding the current selection this could increase to 76 if there are no duplicates.

After clicking on the Select button, and reselecting the Add to existing extract file you will see there are now 76 records in this extract file.

If you try to add these 3 records again to this extract file you will find no increase in the number pf records since no duplicates are allowed in extract files.

Since you wish to remove the current selection from an existing extract file, you will be first asked to identify that extract file:

The selected extract file currently contains 76 records, by removing the current selection this will decrease to 73.

You will be asked to identify a procedure that should have been loaded into the programme editor before starting SuperView.

If this routine is present then the main file will be filtered to the currently displayed selection.

There are no restrictions on what you do in the routine.

If you change the filter then when control returns to SuperView the filter will be reset.

An example of exproc() is displayed below:

This will print the field KeyPat.PATFIL to the current display for each of the currently selected records.

If you wish to export the current selection then you will have to choose into which format the current selection should be written.

The selection of export formats are

The output files will be found in the export sub-directory of the master file directory.

For all the output formats the following questions will need to be answered.

Firstly which fields from the master file do you require to export:

Now you should specify the order of records in the export file.

The name of the output file now should be

You will be presented with the extension of the selected output.

.CSV CSV (comma-separated values)

.DBF dBASE II, III PLUS, and IV, and Enable versions 1 and 2

.DB Paradox (version 3.5 and earlier)

.DIF VisiCalc and others

.HTM HTML tables

.LGX Logistix

.XLS Excel (version 3 and earlier)

.XML XML data file

.WKS Lotus 1-2-3

• ASCII delimited
• The default for this output is the TAB field delimiter 09)
• A record delimiter of (13) and (10).
• Comma-separated values
• CSV is a specially formatted ASCII file. It consists of columns which are separated by commas, and rows that are separated by a carriage-return/linefeed. Double-quotes are only placed around an entry if the entry contains a comma, a double-quote character, or a carriage-return/linefeed. Double-quote characters are escaped by placing an additional double-quote character before the character. Numbers are formatted with a decimal point if they require one. Some applications apply localization rules to the data which can cause problems with reading data from one CSV file to another. Superbase only supports comma separators, and decimal points. Dates and times will be formatted according to the field definition.
• If you specify the USING LABELS option for CSV files, the field names in the Superbase file will be exported as the first row of the file.
• ASCII fixed – length
• dBaseII
• dBase III/V
• DIF
• Enable
• Excel
• Specify whether Descending order desired.
• You can specify if the field names should contain the spreadsheet labels
• Logistix
• Paradox
• Paradox4
• HTML
• The 3 records are set up as an html document. HTML tables will be output with fields as HT tags (table heading) and the rest of the data in tabular format. HTML output does not include anything except a DOCTYPE tag line and the table itself. Some browsers cannot successfully display such tables until they have been included in an HTML document.
• XML
• 
  XML tables will be output with a table tag and a record tag. Also, the data types of each field are output a

After having made your selections you can store the selection criteria for later usage.

Click on Store and you will be asked to provide a title for the current selection and its contents and groupings. (see later sections)