Something weird with the Summarize Tool

I'm Working on challenge #36. I got the correct answer, but I decided to go back through and combine/condense the tools on my workflow. While doing this I ran into a weird situation where two identical Summarize Tools with identical input and identical configurations are giving me two different outputs and I can't for the life of my figure out why. The bottom branch in the picture below gives me the output I want. I used the Record ID Tool to create a data column, and then used the Multi-Row Tool to alter that data so that all PMID information had a value of 2 and all Author data had a value of 1. The top branch has the Multi-Row Tool creating and altering that row of data (with a select tool to change the order of the rows to make sure the data going into the summarize tool is completely identical for both branches). Below is a screenshot of my workflow. Just in case more info is needed, I also attached the workflow itself.

challenge_36_start_file.yxmd

Workflow

Help

Accepted answers

RobertOdera

Hi, @Oren_Soloman

-I will offer that generating an Alteryx Record ID, means that each row is distinct (and that streams into your Update Record ID which would be okay from order of operations outcome).

-I will offer that generating a Field called 'Record ID' without first asserting row distinctness means that you're just creating a dimension with two distinct rows, 1 or 2.

-small nuance, not a tool glitch, but huge difference in downstream data behavior

I hope this helps.

Try the below, if it helps you condense your flow.

Cheers!

All comments

JBLove

This is interesting. I don't have an answer, but I don't think this is the Summarize Tool. When I disconnect both Summarize tools and connect them to just the top branch or just the bottom branch the same results are returned. This would seemingly suggest something upstream in the workflow.

JBLove

Oddly on the bottom branch, when I updated the Summarize tool to only Group By Record ID I received more than two rows. I expected to only see 2 since the distinct values are 1 and 2. I also used the Unique Tool and selected just Record ID. I expected only the first instance of 1 and 2 to return and again many more rows than that were returned.

Have you tried to recreate your workflow from a separate workflow tab? I have had a scenario before when I've sent a workflow package to a colleague and things were "buggy". When they recreated the workflow from scratch it worked as expected. One important thing to do here would be to actually re configure each step. Simply copying and pasting the tools from one workflow to another could persist the corrupted element.

RobertOdera

Hi, @Oren_Soloman

-I will offer that generating an Alteryx Record ID, means that each row is distinct (and that streams into your Update Record ID which would be okay from order of operations outcome).

-I will offer that generating a Field called 'Record ID' without first asserting row distinctness means that you're just creating a dimension with two distinct rows, 1 or 2.

-small nuance, not a tool glitch, but huge difference in downstream data behavior

I hope this helps.

Try the below, if it helps you condense your flow.

Cheers!

Oren_Soloman

Thank you @RobertOdera,

I was thinking that it must be a subtlety within the RecordID Tool, but I was having trouble pinning down what that subtlety was. Thanks again for the clarification.

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