Improvements to Join Tool

[Rohit_Bajaj]

Hi All,

While using the Join tool, I have ran across the following which I believe if included as part of Alteryx vanilla Join Tool version would be helpful -

1) Joining two data sets on Null values should be optional or should be removed. Generally Null means the value is not known so it seems like a logical error to treat two unknown values as same, unless specified otherwise.

2) Compress whitespaces, I have come across data sets coming from two entites which are all same except for the whitespace. So I think it would help to have an option wherein multiple whitespaces are compressed into one.

3) Case sensitivity/insensitivity - This is quite common for users to convert into upper case or lower case the columns on which Join condition are based. But IT developers end up coding more and at times creating new fields just for joining purpose.

4) Null matches non null - At times the requirement is such that if the join succeeds on a particular key column, null and not null values should be considered a match (but not two non equal non null values).

5) Removal of junk characters - There should be some functionality to remove junk characters from the columns on which joins are performed.

All/Any of the above points can be made available as an additional option in conjunction with the settings available today.

Thanks,

Rohit Bajaj

[Rohit_Bajaj]

Hi All,

In addition to it, I believe the following might also help -

6) Columns Naming and Selection from Outer Join - The renaming of columns done inside a Join tool should flow to the outputs from Left and Right Outer Join connectors, additionally might like to have the choice of column moving out of L/R based on user selection in Join tool and not like all columns from Left input as part of Left Outer Join and likewise.

Thanks,

Rohit

[Rohit_Bajaj]

Hi All,

One more to the list ...

7) Joining AND/OR along with Preference - At times the need is to do a OR Join, or the case might be Join on some AND conditions and if this fails try another AND and so on. What might be helpful is to have AND and OR join options - set along with clubbing of ANDs or ORs together and along with it to have a preference order defined.

E.g. for AND/OR might be (Table1.ColA=File2.ColumnA AND Table1.ColB=File2.ColumnB) OR (Table1.ColA=File2.ColumnA AND Table1.ColC=File2.ColumnC).

Another example depicting OR and order of preference might be (Table1.AttX=File2.AttributeX OR Table1.AttY=File2.AttributeY and so on ...)

Here AttY=AttributeY condition would be evaluated only when join on AttX=AttributeX fails.

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