What is ADA?

FILTERING Is The Art Of "HIDING THE DATA YOU DO NOT WANT TO VIEW..."

The Microsoft Office Excel AutoFilter feature provides a simple and effective way to view records in a list that meet certain criteria. When AutoFilter is turned on in a range of cells set up as a Database, the row headers show drop-down arrows that allow you to specify the criteria. Rows that do not meet the criteria are hidden but redisplayed by selecting all from the drop-down, or by turning AutoFilter off.

Task: How can I find all the records that contain a particular word in a certain column?
This is easier said than done. Because Excel's AutoFilter does not support a Random-Access method in order to filter your data. On the other hand you are confined to certain physical limits as far as your PC's-RAM is concerned because Microsoft Office Excel needs to keep you data in memory...

A big help in filtering your data is the Custom AutoFilter function which allows a combination of the logical operators "AND" and/or "OR" plus some more very helpful features.

There may be occasions where you want just a little bit more than that and if you are some sort of a Microsoft Office Excel expert you may want to switch to the Advanced Filter option.

This feature is one of the most powerful one that Microsoft Office Excel has to offer but it is not too obvious to master. This is now the perfect moment to introduce you to our little gem called ADA, meaning Advanced AutoFilter. This program incorporates all the features of "The Other"; AutoFilter with a few significant enhancements.

• It uses Microsoft's ADO approach to read data from disk according to the individual search criteria specified
• Unlike Microsoft Office Excel's AutoFilter there is no need to keep your data in memory while filtering
• It will import only data that matches your search criteria and therefore will NOT have any hidden rows
• There may be practically limitless search criteria to be defined combined with nested "ANDs" or "ORs"
• There is one important rule to be followed, your data must have the format: Fixed-Record-Length and Space Delimited Text File. That means you need to create yourself a database with a certain record structure layout which is defined in a file called "QryTxt.INI"

The following explanation will guide you through the individual steps of how to setup such a file and what restrictions to be observed. You do not need to be an expert in ADO-programming but you should be familiar with Fixed-Record-Length and Space Delimited Text Files; we do not use the old-fashioned CSV approach.