Filtering records

Filtering allows you to display only those records that meet specific criteria and exclude the rest of them.

Filtering is especially useful when you’re working with large number of records and at least approximately know which kind of records you want to find. For example, you may want to display all computers with a particular configuration, such as Windows XP Professional, CPU Speed less than 3 GHz, and HDD free space less than 5800 MB.

You can customize and apply the following filters:

• Quick Filter - allows you to filter the records that have already been retrieved from the database.

• Advanced Filter - allows you to retrieve from the database only the data that meets the filtering criteria.

The Advanced Filter can decrease the number of retrieved records and is, therefore, preferable when you are working with a large number of records and the database connection isn't too fast, or the amount of RAM in your computer isn't very high.

NOTE: By default, Alloy Discovery converts the Quick Filter into the Advanced Filter, when you save a grid view (for details, see Working with views). To disable automatic conversion, clear the check box in the Advanced Filter Options section of the Advanced Preferences.

The Quick Filter allows you to filter the records only by the fields that are already shown in the grid, when the Advanced Filter allows filtering the grid by any fields, including both shown and hidden ones.

NOTE: If you apply a new filter without first removing the previous filter, the new filtering condition(s) and the previous filtering condition(s) add up.