Browse rows

Status

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 86.2% of 312 rows (exact class, version 2).

Background

When to use it

Browse rows when the question is what the data actually looks like: how a value is written, which columns sit beside it, what a suspicious record holds. (Meridian's view) In DuckDB, LIMIT can be used without an ORDER BY clause, but the rows it returns might not be deterministic without one.^[4] In DuckDB, a LIMIT without ORDER BY can still be useful, for example to inspect a quick snapshot of the data.^[4] For a quick look, any rows will do; to come back to the same page later, or to page forward without skipping or repeating rows, sort on a unique key first. (Meridian's view)

In Tableau Prep, the data stored while a flow is built might be a sample of the data for large data sets.^[2] In Tableau Prep, running a finished flow applies its operations to the entire data set.^[2] In Alteryx Designer, without a Browse tool the Results window displays up to 1 MB of data from a tool by default.^[3] In Alteryx Designer, Browse tools can be disabled for a workflow when the entire dataset should not be stored in memory.^[3] In Alteryx Designer, each Browse In-DB tool triggers a database query and can impact performance.^[5] The Browse In-DB tool in Alteryx Designer displays the first 100 records by default, and that number can be changed.^[5] A page of rows that looks clean says little about the rows not shown, so read a page for examples and turn to a profile or a count to judge the whole table. (Meridian's view)

In OpenRefine, a small grey null can be shown in each cell that holds null, and a null cell is not the same thing as an empty cell.^[6] When browsing, turn on whatever marks a missing value, because a blank cell on screen can hide either. (Meridian's view)

The method

In rows pagination, a page is set by the number of rows per page and the current page number, and it begins at row (page number − 1) × rows + 1.^[1] In DuckDB, the LIMIT clause restricts the number of rows fetched, and the OFFSET clause sets the position to start reading from, so the first OFFSET rows are ignored.^[4] In DuckDB, LIMIT is an output modifier, applied logically at the very end of the query.^[4] DuckDB 2.0 introduced the SQL-standard FETCH FIRST ... ROWS ONLY syntax as an alternative to LIMIT.^[4]

In KNIME, the Table View node can enable pagination, showing only a certain number of rows at a time, with a page size chosen in its configuration.^[7] In KNIME, the Table View node can enable a global search inside the table and sorting by clicking the column headers.^[7] In KNIME, the Tile View node displays each data row as one tile arranged in a grid layout.^[8]

In Polars, DataFrame.glimpse gives a dense preview with one line per column, showing the column name, the data type and the first few values, so that wide dataframes display cleanly.^[9]

Compared with the alternatives

Tableau Prep's workspace has both views: the Profile pane is a summary of each field in the data sample, while the Data grid holds the row level detail.^[2] A profile answers how much and how often across a column; a page of rows answers what one record looks like, and each catches mistakes the other misses. (Meridian's view)

Sources

1. [1]Select (SQL) - Wikipediasecondary source
2. [2]About Tableau Prep - Tableaudocumentation
3. [3]Browse Tooldocumentation
4. [4]LIMIT and OFFSET Clauses – DuckDBdocumentation
5. [5]Browse In-DB Tooldocumentation
6. [6]Sort and view | OpenRefinedocumentation
7. [7]Table Viewdocumentation
8. [8]Tile Viewdocumentation
9. [9]polars.DataFrame.glimpse — Polars documentationdocumentation