MS Access use DATE() in a calculated field - date

I am using Microsoft Access 2016. I am trying to find out how many years exist from the current year until a future year. I have a column that is end_date. I am trying to create a calculated field that is essentially YEAR(end_date) - YEAR(current_year). I tried to use YEAR(DATE()) but DATE() is not allowed to be used in a calculated field apparently.
Is there no way to do a calculation like this?

Nope. Calculated fields are cached and static, so are NEVER allowed to contain ANY information that will change over time, due to system settings, or anything else that is not directly entered in that row.
However, you should not be using calculated fields anyway. See http://allenbrowne.com/casu-14.html, among many posts advocating for not using calculated fields.
Instead, use queries to do calculations. That way, you won't have any trouble using the current date, and won't have to deal with the possible errors and portability issues calculated fields come with.

I changed my thinking to calculate this in a form. It does not seem good practice to have a field in a DB that changes everyday.

In a form, you can use this expression as controlsource for a textbox:
=DateDiff("yyyy",Date(),[EndDate])
However, that return the difference in calendar years. To find the count of full years, use a function like AgeSimple and this expression:
=AgeSimple([EndDate])

Related

Have Max value of range of dates filter be todays date

I have a "Range of Dates" filter and what I want is for the max (or right most value) to always be the most recent date which should be today's date. What seems to be happening is that if I leave the dashboard open and come back the next day the max value is yesterday's date and I must manually move the slider over to be today's date. How can I accomplish this?
I find a calculated field is the best way to do this as I have run into the same issues using the out of the box max date filter.
Create a calculated field as follows:
[date] = {FIXED: max([date])}
This creates a True False field where only the records that have the max data and carried through.
Now drag this onto the filter pane and select 'TRUE'.
I've generally seen two basic approaches for this problem: Calculated fields and relative dates.
Use a calculated field or parameter or some combination of calculated fields and parameters with filters. This is similar to what smb suggests in their answer to this question. It also seems to be the most popular approach.
If you don't particularly care about being able to set the end-date with the slider, you could try using relative dates, using the approaches detailed in the accepted answer to this Tableau forum question and in this Tableau Knowledge Base article. Jennifer Vonhagel also gives a second answer to the Tableau forum question farther down that uses a parameter plus calculated field approach.
Additionally, this Tableau Knowledge Base article offers another option (Option 1, in the article) if you have Tableau 10.3+: You can use the "Latest Date Preset" (see here for details) check box in the date filter dialog box. I haven't used this, but it looks promising if you're using Tableau Desktop (seems like it wouldn't work for Tableau Web). The article's Options 2-4 are just riffs on calculated fields, in my opinion.
Two more approaches I've heard of – but never personally seen in the wild:
Push the max date down into the view you put Tableau on top of and let the view do the work.
Use a script to modify the Tableau workbook's XML.

Tableau Using Filter Action to change Parameter value

Is it possible in a Dashboard to apply a date range filter to a field, let's call it Date, to get min(Date) and max(Date) values and pass them to two parameters, respectively called Start Date and End Date?
I've searched online but I couldn't find anything. Any help would be much appreciated.
Link to Tableau community with attached Tableau example:
https://community.tableau.com/ideas/8657
It is not possible. This is a long-standing feature request that for some reason is not being implemented yet. They refer to it as Dynamic parameters. The idea is currently under review, since 2012.
In my case I ended up removing the time range filter completely and using the parameters controller directly as user date inputs.

SSRS 2008 limiting scope based on expression

I have a fairly simple problem, but I don't think I understand SSRS and scopes well enough to figure this out.
What I have is a case (one entity) that can have multiple appointments (another entity). Appointments have a date and a status. I want to display the next soonest appointment date and its status. To display the date I'm using
=Min(IIf(Fields!appt_start.Value > Globals!ExecutionTime, Fields!appt_start.Value, Nothing))
The idea is that I first pick only those appointments that occur in the future, and then grab the soonest one. It seems to work great.
Now, I need to apply the same filtering logic, but display the appointment status rather than the date. From my understanding, this is where scopes would come in. I could limit my scope to just the appointment I want, and then show its status. But I don't understand how to do that.
One way to go about this particular problem would be to use a filter in combination with the First function. Add a filter to the table to only show dates greater than the current day. Use a table row with no grouping and use expressions like this:
=First(Fields!appt_start.Value)
=First(Fields!appt_status.Value)
Another option would be to add calculated fields to the dataset to only populate values such as status when the date is greater than the current day. This is useful if you need to show more information later on.
Edit: Yes, you would want to sort the data by date for the First function to work right. You can actually filter at 3 different levels in SSRS. Right-click on your dataset and go to Dataset Properties. Click on Filters. Click Add. Fill in the expression, operator, and value to meet your need. You can also do this in the group properties or the table properties.

Get the last date of non-empty value using MDX

Do you know how to get the last non-empty value using mdx query.. then after that.. i want to count how many null values are next to it up to the last date. My main purpose for this is to count how many days a customer has no transaction..
i have to make a report in ssrs (using adventure works cube) that counts how many days a customer has no transaction..
thanks..
Use this article to obtain set of non empty dates.
To obtain count you can:
Use member properties (day of year or something more suitable in
this case) and just subtract one value from another.
You can find
last date with non empty value, previous one using LAG(1), include
them to the next construction {prev.date:last.date} and use COUNT
for set
Recently I follow this article, It really helps me.
The most important part is to understand scope usage.
Even If you don't have an Enterprise Edition, you can use it.

Filemaker: making queries of large data more efficient

OK I have a Master Table of shipments, and a separate Charges table. There are millions of records in each, and it's come into Filemaker from a legacy system, so all the fields are defined as Text even though they may be Date, Number, etc.
There's a date field in the charges table. I want to create a number field to represent just the year. I can use the Middle function to parse the field and get just the year in a Calculation field. But wouldn't it be faster to have the year as a literal number field, especially since I'm going to be filtering and sorting? So how do I turn this calculation into its value? I've tried just changing the Calculation field to Number, but it just renders blanks.
There's something wrong with your calculation, it should not turn blank just because field type is different. I.e.:
Middle("10-12-2010", 7, 4)
should suffice, provided the calc result is set to Number. You may also wrap it into GetAsNumber(...), but, really, there's no difference as long as field type is right.
If you have FM Advanced, try to set up your calc in the Data Viewer (Tools -> Data Viewer) rather than in Define Fields, this would be faster and, once you like the result, you can transfer it into a field or make a replace. But, from the searching/sorting standpoint there's no difference between a (stored) calculation and a regular field, so replacing is pointless and, actually, more dangerous, as there's no way to undo a wrong replace.
Here's what i was looking for, from
http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3366/~/converting-unstored-calculation-fields-to-store-data
:
Basically, instead of using a
Calculation field, you create am EMPTY
Number, date or text field and use
Replace Field Contents from the Records menu, and put
your calculation (or reference, or
both) there.
Not dissing FileMaker at all, but millions of records means FileMaker is probably the wrong choice here. Your system will be slow, slow, slow. FileMaker is great for workgroups and there is no way to develop a database app faster. But one thing FileMaker is not good at is handling huge numbers of records.
BTW, Mikhail Edoshin is exactly right.