Options - Display Options

These are a number of miscellaneous options controlling how data is displayed.

Show Row Numbers

Specifies whether Row Numbers are shown. This gives the default behaviour; when displaying a query result you can switch Row Numbers on and off by View > Row Numbers, clicking the icon, or F4.

Show Group-by Box

Specifies whether the group-by box will be shown on the data display. This gives the default behaviour; when displaying a query result you can switch the Group-by box on and off by View > Group-by Box, clicking the icon, or Ctrl+G.

Two-color Display

Specifies whether the data display will show the data as a more easily-readable two-color display. This gives the default behaviour; when displaying a query result you can switch the two-color display on and off by View > Two Color, clicking the icon, or Ctrl+T.

Select the color to be used for the second display color by clicking the Select Color button.

Variable Row Height

Specifies whether the data display will show the data using variable height for the rows. This is useful if your data contains multi-line text columns.

This option is set to the default behaviour. When you display a query result you can switch the variable-height display on and off by View > Variable Row Height, clicking the icon, or Ctrl+H.

This option is CPU-intensive and can significantly slow down the data display. For this reason, the setting of this option (unlike most of the others) is not saved between AQT sessions.

Cursor wraps at end of row

This option governs how you move through the grid with the cursor keys. When this option is selected:

• when you are using the right cursor key, and the cursor gets to the right-most cell, it will go to the next row.
• when you are using the left cursor key, and the cursor gets to the left-most cell, it will go to the previous row.

When this option is not selected, the cursor will stop once it gets to the left or right-most cells.

Note, you can go to the left-most cell with the Home key. You can go to the right-most cell with the End key.

Maximum Column Width

Gives the maximum width (in pixels) of a column in the data display. The default value is 3000; you may wish to increase this if you often deal with large columns. You must specify a value greater than 500.

Minimum Row Height

This gives the height of rows in the display grid. The default value (250) is normally adequate. However if you change the font to a larger or taller font, you may need to increase this. You must specify a value greater than 200.

Maximum Row Height

Gives the maximum height (in pixels) for a row, when the Variable Row Height option is in effect. You must specify a value greater than 10000.

Sort Numeric and Date Columns Correctly

The Display Data grid in AQT does not correctly sort Numeric and Date columns if they contain (null) values. This is because the grid built-in sort expects the column to contain numeric values only, and behaves unpredictably when it does not.

When this option is selected, AQT will do use a "custom-sort" method to sort the data in the grid. This will correctly sort numeric/date columns containing null values, however this sort method is a lot slower (while the sort is being done, you will see the message Sorting... in the status-bar of the window). It is not recommend you use this option when you have a large amount of data displayed in the grid.

Use Grid formatting for Numeric columns

This is a technical option concerning the way AQT uses the grid.

• When this option is not selected, all columns in the grid are defined as character. The grid displays the data as AQT has retrieved it from the database. However there is one problem with this option; when you use the Grouping function of the grid, it will not handle numeric columns correctly (it will sort them as if they were character).
• To prevent this problem, you can check this option. When this is done, numeric columns are defined to the grid as numeric. The grouping function will now work correctly. However the problem with this option is that the grid will do it's own formating of the numeric data. While this works in all cases we have tested, it has the possibility to display the data incorrectly.

By default this option is selected. If you have a problem with the display of numeric columns, you should switch this option off.

Show ROWID

This option is useful for databases that have an internal table row identifier that can be displayed with the contents of the table. For Oracle, Informix and SQLBase this is called the ROWID. For SAP DB this is called the SYSKEY. For PostgreSQL this is called the OID.

When this option is selected, this rowid is displayed when a table is displayed. AQT does this by changing the table-display SQL to include the rowid column.

You may notice that this option doesn't come into effect right away - only on the next table you display.

Displaying the rowid is often useful when you wish to edit the data in a table. AQT will recognise the rowid column as a valid table key, and will use this to identify the rows you are updating or deleting.

Show Length of Varchar Columns?

This is a potentially useful option for database developers. When a value is inserted into a Varchar column the length of the column has to be set (in C and Java this is generally done with the null byte, in other languages a length field is set). When you display the table you can verify that the data has been loaded correctly, however the column length cannot be seen.

When you select this option the length of the column is displayed, along with the data. For instance FRED will be displayed as (4)FRED. This can be useful for verifying that the column lengths have been set correctly - if instead you see (20)FRED then you know that you are filling your database up with a lot of unnecessary blanks! This has happened on some projects we have been involved in.

Remove trailing spaces from string values

When this option is selected (which is the default), AQT removes spaces from the end of string values. De-select this option if you wish to retain these spaces.

This option is used when displaying data, plus the following AQT features:

• Data Export. This option governs whether trailing spaces are included when data is export
• Data Loader. This option governs whether trailing spaces are included when data is loaded from one table to another
• Data Compare. This option governs whether trailing spaces are included in the compare of values between tables.

For DB2/400 use Column Headers

When this option is selected and you are displaying a DB2/400 physical / logical, AQT will use the Column Headers (rather than the Column Name) when displaying the table contents.

For Oracle, use TO_CHAR with Timestamp and Interval columns

Most versions of the Oracle ODBC Driver do not handle Timestamp or Interval columns. When you try to display these, the ODBC Driver, and AQT, will crash. AQT has a work-around for this problem; when you display a table with columns of these types, and you have this option selected, AQT will enclose the timestamp/interval columns in a TO_CHAR function.

By default, this option is selected. De-select this option if you have a recent version of the Oracle ODBC Driver that can display these data types without problem/