How to order a dimension in DV?

Dan Vlamis

Summary

How to order a dimension in DV?

Content

I found a similar question from 2016 at https://community.oracle.com/message/14048203?sr=search&searchId=d29ac5bf-4631-49cf-8a75-134ea66a2017&searchIndex=0#1404… , but since it's been a while and the answer really wasn't complete, I thought I would ask again.

How do I sort by an attribute of a column without making that attribute visible?

For example, I have a spreadsheet voice parts S (Soprano), A (Alto), T (Tenor) and B (Bass).  I wanted these to be sorted in that order (high part to low part).  DV seems to give me the ability to sort A to Z, Z to A, and None.  How do I specify that I want the VoicePart attribute (in my graph) sorted S, A, T, B?

As a workaround, I used created the column VoicePartOrderedCase which has the value:

CASE voicepart WHEN 'S' THEN '1S' WHEN 'A' THEN '2A' WHEN 'T' THEN '3T' WHEN 'B' THEN '4B' ELSE 'OTHER' END

and I use VoicePartOrderedCase, but now my graph shows 1S, 2A, 3T, 4B.  That's a hack and not real intuitive or scalable.  Dimensions often have an order that is implied in some way.  How does DV handle this?  For that matter, it'd be great if we had a "drag and drop" ordering capability.

I know a picture can be worth a thousand words, so here's what my graph looks like with the (ugly) 1S, 2A, 3T, 4B.

Thanks