Overview

Main Top Level Window

Highlander Viewer is the end user's dimensional query and reporting tool. The Viewer and a compiled Highlander database are everything the user needs to query along dimensions and quickly display results in graphical or tabular form. The Viewer supports drill down to the atomic level, reach back to the underlying entity records, and customized display or editing of entity records. The Viewer main window has three panes: Dataview Tree, Query Request, and Result Display pane.

Dataview Tree Pane

The Dataview Tree is a hierarchical structure of Dataviews, the base object for making a query and displaying results. Dataviews and the Dataview Tree are created by the subject matter analyst using Highlander Explorer. The end user navigates the database using the Dataview Tree without concern for how the source data was structured or processed. Dataviews give the user a totally dimensional view of the database.

Query Request Pane

The Query Request pane lists the dataview's dimensions and the query request for each. Here the user requests dimension values or combinations of values for extraction from the database. The syntax is simple, like "HARDW + SOFTW" to request results for the combined industries of "Hardware" and "Software".

Result Display Pane

Query results are displayed in both graphical and tabular form. Depending on the dataview, results could be record counts, summaries of a variable, or combinations of results such as ratios. Highlander also contains a number of data reduction functions such as mean, standard deviation, and percentiles. Custom data reduction functions can be prepared and cataloged for run time calling by dataviews.