INDB record counts popup

[thedr9wningman]

Dear Users, Fans, Compatriots, and Fellow Alteryx Nerds:

One of my favourite parts of using Alteryx is that in all the in-memory tools, there is a quick-and-dirty count in each of your tools' output nodes. You know, you use these all the time and when you switch back into SQL, you get frustrated with having to run the query two or three times just to see the count in each of your join outputs. 

One thing I'm missing as an INDB user is that I have to employ a manual workaround to see what is happening. INDB tools are a bit black-box in that we don't see the counts.

All I want...

I've been using this workaround for a little over a year now and I haven't found it to be incredibly taxing on my resources, so I'm wondering if Alteryx may be able to look into doing this on the back end to make the INDB experience that much closer to the in-memory experience. I just want those numbers above; I don't need to know the byte count, just the record count.

What I need to do to get it

Now, I imagine this is not implemented already for a Very Good Reason. But, enough is enough! Let's shoot for the moon and make this tool all that much better!! Anyone with me?

-Cedric Justice

Cambia Healthcare

[KylieF]

Thank you for your idea and for including visuals!

This is an interesting idea, and after a quick review it looks ready to go to our product team once the necessary like criteria has been met. Please be sure to review our Submission Guidelines if you haven't and like any user ideas that would be beneficial to you!

[thedr9wningman]

@KylieF Wow, so it is possible? That's awesome! How do I gather likes? I don't know a lot of Alteryx Nerds... @davidhenington, @chriswilliams41 do you know anyone who cares about INDB like we do that would like this?

[thedr9wningman]

@joshuaburkhow Is this something you would like?

[joshuaburkhow]

@thedr9wningman well not at pk anymore but I can tell you every user I know would love this feature! 

[thedr9wningman]

@joshuaburkhow Well, spread the word, mate! I don't know a lot of Alteryx nerds! @ryancallihan maybe?

[chriswilliams41]

Definitely, I would love this feature! I'm in for sure. 

[KylieF]

@thedr9wningman

While I can't speak at this time if it actually is technically plausible as our developers would need to check in further on the limitations and time constraints (though I believe most anything is possible with enough time and interest when it comes to the idea boards), doing exactly what you're doing is the best way to gather likes! It helps our product team know just how many users and companies would be influenced by an idea via the likes so keep sending the idea to colleagues and associates in your and different industries if you can!

[ryancallihan]

I think this would be useful. Since a fix would likely require extra queries/resources to the DB, maybe there could be an option to turn off/on this capability. 

[davidhenington]

Great idea although it seems like it would require...running more queries. 

A lot of what goes into being smart with in-db is about finding that point at which you're getting carried away (with the cost of the query). 

I guess automatically generating and running count queries isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

But would generating explain plans or query cost be even better? 

I guess different use cases? Good stuff! 

[simonaubert_bd]

Hello,

This would be useful but I fear the cost of this feature in term of performance is too high. The whole point of in-db is that you wrote your logical step and Alteryx translates it in an efficient query. Doing really the different step and counting the number of record at each step may be in most case a non-sense.

Best regards,

Simon