About crosstabs

Cross tabulation is a useful technique for analyzing data. By presenting data in a spreadsheet-like grid, a crosstab lets you view summary data instead of a long series of rows and columns. For example, in a sales report you might want to summarize the quarterly unit sales of each product.

In InfoMaker, you create crosstabs by using the Crosstab presentation style. When data is retrieved into the report, the crosstab processes all the data and presents the summary information you have defined for it.

An example

Crosstabs are easiest to understand through an example. Consider the Printer table in the EAS Demo DB. It records quarterly unit sales of printers made by sales representatives in one year. (This is the same data used to illustrate graphs in Chapter 13, “Working with Graphs.”)

Table 14-1: The Printer table in the EAS Demo DB

Rep

Quarter

Product

Units

Simpson

Q1

Stellar

12

Jones

Q1

Stellar

18

Perez

Q1

Stellar

15

Simpson

Q1

Cosmic

33

Jones

Q1

Cosmic

5

Perez

Q1

Cosmic

26

Simpson

Q1

Galactic

6

Jones

Q1

Galactic

2

Perez

Q1

Galactic

1

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Simpson

Q4

Stellar

30

Jones

Q4

Stellar

24

Perez

Q4

Stellar

36

Simpson

Q4

Cosmic

60

Jones

Q4

Cosmic

52

Perez

Q4

Cosmic

48

Simpson

Q4

Galactic

3

Jones

Q4

Galactic

3

Perez

Q4

Galactic

6

This information can be summarized in a crosstab. Here is a crosstab that shows unit sales by printer for each quarter:

Shown is a cross tab

The first-quarter sales of Cosmic printers displays in the first data cell. (As you can see from the data in the Printer table shown before the crosstab, in Q1 Simpson sold 33 units, Jones sold 5 units, and Perez sold 26 units—totaling 64 units.) InfoMaker calculates each of the other data cells the same way.

To create this crosstab, you only have to tell InfoMaker which database columns contain the raw data for the crosstab, and InfoMaker does all the data summarization automatically.

What crosstabs do

Crosstabs perform two-dimensional analysis:

Each cell in a crosstab is the intersection of a column (the first dimension) and a row (the second dimension). The numbers that appear in the cells are calculations based on both dimensions. In the preceding crosstab, it is the sum of unit sales for the quarter in the corresponding column and printer in the corresponding row.

Crosstabs also include summary statistics. The preceding crosstab totals the sales for each quarter in the last row and the total sales for each printer in the last column.

How crosstabs are implemented in InfoMaker

Crosstabs in InfoMaker are implemented as grid reports. Because crosstabs are grid reports, you can resize and reorder columns when you run the crosstab.

NoteRunning a crosstab You can run a crosstab by previewing it in the Report painter and by running it from an executable file.