Kith and Kin Pro manual - Tutorial - Searching using queries

Kith and Kin Pro implements SQL (Structured Query Language), a powerful, industry standard method for finding data. You can either use simple query criteria, which build a query statement for you, or enter the SQL query directly for more advanced queries.

In this tutorial we will concentrate on doing some simple queries. For advanced SQL queries see: Using a query to find data. For even simpler searching see the previous tutorial "Simple searching".

SQL lets you choose which parts of the database you want to see and how you want to see it. This includes selecting tables and fields, renaming the field headings, selecting records based on conditional statements and sorting records.

Click on the "Search" button on the button bar to open the search window.

You can hover the mouse cursor over parts of the image of the search window above to find out what they're for.

The search window in the image above has been set to find all the people with "gordon" in their surnames. Let's see how that was done.

First, click on the "Clear criteria" button to make sure that there is nothing in the query criteria. Also, make sure that "Partial match", "Case sensitive" and "Match all fields" options are set as shown.

Click on the down arrow to the right of the "Database table" box to bring down the list of tables and select "People". Each type of record in Kith and Kin Pro has its own database table, all the tables together make up the whole database. To perform a query, you select the table which you want to search through and only records from that table are included in the results.

The "Selected fields" list will now show all the available fields in the "People" table. Notice that they all have a "ï¿½" symbol beside them indicating that every field will appear in the results list. We only want the "Description" field to be included in the results, so we need to remove the "ï¿½"s from the rest of the fields. Double-click on "Code" in the "Selected fields" list to remove the "ï¿½" and do the same for "Surname". We could go through the rest of the fields doing this, but for speed, clear all the selections at once by clicking on the "Select none" button . Now all the "ï¿½"s have been removed so double-click on "Description" to re-selected it.

You may have noticed that each time you changed a selection in the "Selected fields" list, the text in SQL query box changed. It should now have two lines of SQL statements "SELECT People.[Description]" and "FROM People". As you choose the settings for your search criteria, Kith and Kin Pro automatically builds the SQL query for you. For advanced queries you will be able to enter the SQL statements directly.

We have now told the program which table to get the records from and which fields from that table to include in the results list. Next we have to give it some conditions to search for.

Place the mouse cursor over the "Surname" field in the "Selected fields" list and hold down the left mouse button. Now drag the cursor over to the top row of the "Field name" column in the "Criteria" grid. When you're there, release the mouse button and "Surname" will appear in the top-left corner of the grid. You could also have just typed "Surname" into the grid box. Click on the box in the "Op" (operator) column to the right, then click the drop-down button and select "=" from the drop-down list. Click on the box in the "Search text" column to the right again (or just press the TAB key) and type in "gordon" (without the quotes).

That's our query complete. Click on the "Search" button to perform the search. The results list will now show the 38 records of people whose surname is Gordon.

Now let's narrow the search down a bit and look for all the "James GORDON"s.

Go back to the "Selected fields" list and drag the "Firstnames" field into the second row of the "Field name" column of the "Criteria" grid. Type "=" into the "Op" column and "james" into the "Search text" column so that the "Criteria" grid looks like this:

Now click on the "Search" button again and only 4 records will appear.

This search was performed with the "Match all fields" option selected. This meant that Kith and Kin Pro only found records which matched both of the criteria, ie. only people who had "gordon" in their surnames and "james" in their firstnames. Click on the "Match any field" option and click on the "Search" button again. 43 records are found this time, all the people who have "gordon" in their surnames or "james" in their firstnames.

Once you have records in the results list, you can do things with them. Double-clicking on a record opens its data form for editing. Right-clicking on the results list pops up a menu which allows you to print or preview the results list or export the records to a delimited text file.

A delimited text file is useful for exporting data from Kith and Kin Pro to other applications such as a database or spreadsheet program. Once the data is in a database, for instance, you can produce customised list reports.

You can change the width of the columns in the results list by dragging the right edge of the column in the top row (where the column names are) left or right. You can also change the order of the columns by dragging the middle of the column in the top row left or right.

Click on the "Close" button to close the search window.

Next tutorial - Printing

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