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Limiting number of records retrieved.

Posted August 21st, 2008 by Chris Gerrard
in Data Sources and Performance

I'm trying to do some basic quality and nature analysis of a database with a couple of dozen columns and 14M rows.
My basic approach is to simply show the # of records for each distinct value of the dimensions - this is really valuable as the first cut at analysis.

So there's a visualization for each dimension.

With 14M records this is much more time-consuming, and I'd be happy to work against a representative sample of the data, at least initially.

I'd be happy to retrieve a random sample, or even the first n rows.

How can I do this? (and I hope it's not too obvious or simple)

Thanks.

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On August 22nd, 2008 James Baker said:

Depending on which database you're using, you can extract a random sampling to work with. You can get "Top n rows" on any.

Data --> Extract...
In the "Number of Rows" section, "Percent" will be available if your database supports it. Otherwise enter a number or Rows to extract from the top.

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On August 22nd, 2008 Chris Gerrard said:

Thanks, James.

I completely forgot about this, was thinking in terms of limiting the number of records retrieved during an actual query.

This is how it worked in the technology/tool I have the longest experience with - a classic case of paradigm blindness.

Chris

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