dataBoiler

A simple data massaging application

dataBoiler is my attempt to produce a program for OS X which has some of the easy data manipulation qualities of Provue's remarkable Panorama database. To date, Provue has not ported Panorama to OSX and so, to capture some of the features that I immediate ly need, I have started creating dataBoiler, a very early version of which is provided here. In a few steps, dataBoiler can reduce data for export (save to) to Excel where it can be pivot'd or charted. While Excel can filter data, the process is extremely cumbersome. To take TAMS Analyzer data and turn it into a pivot table in Excel, sufficiently filtered and summarized with the necessary information in place, it takes a good 20 minutes and involves just about every function on the Data menu. For our purposes the same effect can be achieved in 1/2 minute in dataBoiler!

Some random things to know: the program works with 2 levels of memory. The program can always recall the original file! In addition, you can save an intermediate transformation of the data with the remember button. This becomes the baseline for many operations such as find "more." Vitally important, you have to sort first, outline second, and do sums and counts third! To use dates for sorting or outlining you need to fill in the Calendar field with the format of your data using the Cocoa date formatting commands; for November 13, 1988; you would need to fill in "%B %e, %Y" (no quotes) for instance. Good luck and I hope it helps your data reduction.



Get the software here
This program will soon be GPL'd. If you would like the source, just write me.