Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Column List of Values
Many applications these days have items that are
tagged
, that is, a column containing multiple
descriptors, separated by commas. Using the built-in column list of values will not help your users find
“all my items with the tag of APEX”. To accomplish this, I add a column list of values that selects all the
unique values from my tags table (or even better, all the values from a table that stores just the unique
values).
select TAG
from AB TAG SUM
order by TAG
I also set the Column Filter Type to Use Defined List of Values to Filter Word Contains. This way it
will not just find “APEX” but “APEX, Database”, “Security, APEX, SSO”, etc. Notice that column list of
values only has one value, not a display and return like an item's list of values. You can use a standard
list of values but only the first column, or display value, will be used. Without a custom list of values,
Application Express will display the first 999 unique values from the column within the query. An
example of the list of values display for Tags is shown in Figure 13-12 and the resulting report, after
selecting APEX, is shown in Figure 13-13.
Figure 13-12
. Report showing column filtering with column list of values
