Don't forget to read the 'expert tips'

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There are a lot of features in Easy Data Transform that can make your life easier, but which aren’t always easy to discover. A lot of them are covered in the ‘Expert tips’ section of the documentation. So please take a few minutes to read through this section once you have mastered the basics. Even if you are an experienced user, you might find something you didn’t know about.

Expert tips for Windows

Expert tips for Mac

Is there anything we missed from the expert tips?

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  1. USE COMMENTS on complex transformations , you are not going to remember 2 weeks from today what you did and why .
  2. When running EDT via command line , remember if you make changes in the transformation file related to input or output you need to copy those changes File->Command Line and copying the code again
  3. You can have multiple output in same file without any issues , in different locations (believe it or not , I didn’t know this)
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Do mean using append write?

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I mean one output can also be put in multiple locations or in single transformation you can do multiple outputs

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If you output to the same file multiple times in one transform without appending (or writing to different sheets of an Excel file) won’t you just overwrite your changes? Perhaps I am misunderstanding?

Or do you mean:

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My (1 single) output is required to be in multiple locations for various reasons

C:\XYZ\1.csv
E:\Google Drive\Sync\1.csv
C:\support\backup\1.csv

All this can be handled in a single transformation . Expert tip here is it’s possible (which I didn’t consider)

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Bingo ! that’s the expert tip it also can be done in 1 go , I took a surprisingly long time to figure this (ha ha)

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Natural language is ambiguous. That’s why I don’t think boxes and arrows are going to get replaced by chat interfaces any time soon.

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More than half the time I am transforming new data in a new schema, not sensibly related to earlier work. A Transform usually opens with a bit of column removal and renaming after which I often create a “spur line” to a Sort, which goes no further. There, I can sort columns of interest one at a time to check extreme or anomalous values, and what might need work. It is a useful adjunct to the Column Values window.

I give this example but there have been other cases where a spur of one or a few Transforms enables some different views or initial data exploration, without trammelllng the main transformation sequence and perhaps informing it.

“You can have spurs.”?

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Note also that there is an Outliers transform for investigating and/or removing outlier values.