Artisanal software sale

Posted by Andy Brice
Jun 27, 2021 at 08:48 AM

>Easy Data Transform easily handled 350 meg of tax roll data. The only
>thing I had to do was add a line feed after each fixed length record and
>write different embedded record types to different files. Pfft, mere
>seconds of work in Python.

You might have been able to do that with the ‘split rows’ transform. Hard to say without seeing your data.

>
>I had hundreds of columns to rename. There were bunches of repeated
>columns non-nerds would need to retype repeatedly. Keyboard Maestro
>solved that, but it would be a nice feature to be able to highlight a
>range of column names in the “rename” transform, copy, and paste either
>into additional columns, or to duplicate in a different transform.
> >There were also cases where I skipped a column in the rename transform.
>That would have meant retyping columns from the point of error forward,
>over a hundred on my first such goof. Again, KM did the trick with a
>macro to start at the bottom and jog each name down by one.
> >Perhaps the coolest cure would be able to load column names from a
>single-line CSV file. Or, better yet, slurp off the top line of a CSV to
>rename columns.

You can substite a header row from another file. Just input it and ‘stack’ it on top of your data (align by column number).

I have also thought about providing find and replace as part of the ‘rename cols’ transform.

The ‘split rows’ might have avoided having so many columns.

>
>Anyway, I hate to gush, but Easy Data Transform is really cool. IBM
>InfoSphere would do the trick, too, but I don’t know how I could hide
>the $2,500/month subscription from my wife. Altair has a nice solution,
>too, but at $2,000/year it would still leave a mark on my wife’s pesky
>spreadsheets.
> >Given the price of other solutions, I owe you an apology for buying Easy
>Data Transform at the SummerFest pricing. Really crass of me, but, see
>above, my wife’s spreadsheets are a force.

At least with the Summerfest promotion, I’m not paying any commission, just an up-front contribution to the publicity. Thanks Mark Bernstein of Tinderbox (the organizer)!

>
>And, snickering with the panache of Snidely Whiplash twirling his
>mustache, I now have data science tools for analyzing her spreadsheets
>and correlating her Amazon purchases!
> >Er, wish me luck on that one.

Software can only do so much. ;0)

We are a bit off-topic. But feel free to email me Easy Data Transform related questions at the support email (https://www.easydatatransform.com/support.html) or post on https://forum.easydatatransform.com/.