InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by David_H on 2015/12/18 09:36

I have a thread going here about a way to search for "orphan" items. But what I really need to get to the bottom of is why do I have items that keep losing values, which is what caused me to ask about that search method in the first place? It's a huge issue because I start to try to work in IQ but instead find myself trying to find items I know should be there.

Today I went to a new grid I created a week ago to review an item I had entered in it. Item is nowhere to be found. I search and here it is:

This should have showed up in the grid I entered it in titled "professional dashboard". That value has been lost. Why??? I should note I let IQ create the "professional dashboard" grid automatically and have not associated any filters or anything special whatsoever with the grid.

Now I go to the grid titled "professional dashboard". I think "OK, I know we've discussed issues on the forum before with the grid hierarchy setting causing items to disappear, so let's make sure that's set to full. It is, but I click it to cycle through the settings, just to make sure. And as I do that, I see the single other item I had in the grid disappear! But...no matter what I set the hierarchy to it's gone, it's now lost the value for the grid as well!

And what's good is I can prove this with a screenshot, because I happened to have had the single item in the grid selected when I was clicking on the hierarchy button: Please note, no filters set on this grid at all.

As you can see hierarchy is set to full. The values for the now disappeared item are still showing in the property pane because it was selected when I was cycling through hierarchy. But the mere act of cycling through the hierarchy setting caused this item to lose it's value for this grid, it's now shown in 0 grids, and closing and reopening and refreshing the grid has no affect on that. As you can see Pierre, the search method we came up with for orphans wouldn't work on this item because this one does happen to have some other values associated with it, so that's another cause of concern for me.

So....why is this happening? And I should note, that whether the value that was lost for the item in the first screenshot happened because of cycling through hierarchy at some other time I have no idea. Might have, or might be something else.

Thanks in advance for all help.

Comments

Another question about something that might be related to this. I just searched on one of the missing items so I could give it a value and get it to show up in the grid where it should be. I find the item and in the properties pane under "all fields" click on the "professional dashboard" value I want it to have. The item then immediately shows up in the "Values" area, BUT in the Values area the item has no check mark! Why did clicking on the check mark field under "all fields" get it to move up to the Values pane but without a check mark?

So then I go to the grid and of course it's not there.

After this happened I again did a search on the item and repeated the steps, but the next time when I clicked on the value i wanted it to have in the all fields area, it added it to the values section with a check mark, as it should.

Hi David,

Strange indeed... You wrote: " I should note I let IQ create the "professional dashboard" grid automatically and have not associated any filters or anything special whatsoever with the grid."

Are you sure ? Currently, when creating a grid with the New Grid dialog, the maximum grid name length is 20... Can you try to create a new grid with a similar long name ?

I'm not sure if it can be the cause, but as I've never seen this kind of information lost, I wonder what the cause can be

Pierre_Admin

p.s. As for the Shown in information, it means that the last time the grid was opened, the item was there. By opening it again, since the item was no longer there, the information was updated. So it has nothing to do with the context parent or hierarchy settings.

Hi Pierre,

I don't think we are on the same page with regard to my "shown in" comment and screenshot. What I am saying is that the one item was there in the grid, I had it highlighted, and "shown in 1 grids" was the value, as it should have been. As a clicked through the hierarchy settings, the item literally disappeared in front of my eyes, and as it did the value changed to "shown in 0 grids", again as it should have, literally confirming the disappearance I saw take place. And cycling through the hierarchy settings, closing and refreshing made no difference, it was gone for good and the value was staying at "shown in 0 grids", again as it should have since it had lost the single value that caused it to meet criteria to show up in any of my grids.

With regard to your question, you are quite correct, the grid actually originally had a different name - "Business Dashboard". Perhaps that is related to some of these problems, because I am continually tweaking IQ, and sometimes that involves renaming grids and fields. So in this instance I changed the name of the dashboard to "Professional Dashboard" and then also changed the name of the auto-created field to "Professional Dashboard", and reset the source for the grid to the renamed field.

When I do that I always then confirm that the renamed grid is working correctly and showing the items I think should be there. In my mind that type of simple renaming should not cause any problems, especially when I always test the grid afterwards to make sure everything is showing up. But perhaps there is a bug that after this has been done, causes those items to disappear in some situations?

When I have a chance I am going to rename a grid and a field, and confirm it all works, and then change hierarchy settings and see if I can get any items to disappear. BTW, I realize that if I rename a grid i don't need to rename the field, I just do that to stay organized, since most (not all) of my grids use a a field of the same name as the source.

OK, I see

But didn't you say initially that you changed the hierarchy settings because the item was no longer shown in the grid ? I'm confused...

I realize all this should not matter and for NO reason whatsoever items should lose field values, I'm just trying to understand the cause, to try to find a solution...

Please look at the original post., I just edited it and highlighted two things in red, let me know if that clears things up. To clarify further, at the moment I first opened the grid, there should have been two and only two items in that grid, that's all I had entered in it. But there was only one.

I then searched for the missing item and found it in the search pane, that's what the first screenshot shows.

I then went back to the professional dashboard grid and played with the hierarchy settings, to see if that was why the first item wasn't showing up, as I cycled through the hierarchy setting I saw the single remaining item lose it's value for that grid and also disappear. Now both items were gone from the grid (i.e. the original item which was already missing and the remaining item which I saw disappear).

Make sense now?

Hi,

Thanks for the clarification. I had figured it out from your edited first post.

That said, I have no clue as to why this happened

Well, at this point I'm going to hope it had something to do with renaming the grid and fields. Or do you think that's unlikely?

None of these items had parents ?

Neither item had parents or children.

Any other such cases ?

Is it possible for you to send over the file ?

(I've never seen this before...)

Sorry can't send the file. Does anyone ever actually take you up on that offer

Yes, it's happened before. It's what prompted me to first start the thread about orphans months ago, and again update that thread the other day. But IF it's related to renaming grids or fields, that's something I've often played with as well.

Yes I've received files from many users in the past...

Until i can reproduce it, it is hard for me to know the cause and if it is related to field renaming (which is something I don't do often, to tell you the truth...)

No worries, I understand. As far as sending the file, if it were just lists of to-do's or reference material I'd not care, but I use it to store my deepest thoughts. I just can't take a chance on opening up the secrets of the universe and the purpose of life to anyone else, not when I'm the only one that's figured it out. The time machine information alone could endanger the universe.

So at this point my big question is are there any specific things you want me to note or be on the lookout for when this happens? For instance, whether the items have parents? Whether it was in a grid that was renamed? Etc. Any specific things you can think of to look for?

I'd go ahead and send the file. If there are any ill effects, you can always use the time machine to go back and un-do it.

Wayne

That won't be an option if Pierre does it first and stops me from having ever existed.

Good point. I didn't think it through.

Wayne

I never have to worry about that. If I don't think something through well, I just go back in time and think it over again. So you never really had a chance.

I understand your concerns and share them, The only exception I have made is with Pierre. He has proven responsible and honest. When he is finished with trouble shooting, Pierre will delete the file upon request. Pierre's interest is in the file's structure and what is causing your problem. For diagnostic purposes, not content. It's about IQ.

Your decision.

Jon

Sony Vaio Z, Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 800 GB SSD

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

Hi David, just to make sure, a few questions and comments.

I'll assume you know perfectly well how source and filters determine what's shown in the grid.

[quote]

[/quote]

Normally (as I think I explained in a recent thread) the only reason why an item would automatically loose a value is because it's been demoted (from TLI to a sub-level), in the grid where the item has been created. This happens only to Boolean (Yes/no) fields.

It could also be because of row/column or auto-assignment equations, if you have any.

So, if you have several grids with the same source, demoting an item could make it invisible in another grid where it "should" remain as TLI (depending on the source/filter of that grid). Do you think that could've happen? (#1)

[quote]

Now I go to the grid titled "professional dashboard". I think "OK, I know we've discussed issues on the forum before with the grid hierarchy setting causing items to disappear, so let's make sure that's set to full. It is, but I click it to cycle through the settings, just to make sure. And as I do that, I see the single other item I had in the grid disappear! But...no matter what I set the hierarchy to it's gone, it's now lost the value for the grid as well!

[/quote]

You probably know all that, but just in case:

The grid hierarchy settings (full or not) only affects the displayed sub-items, as expected.

However, if hierarchy is completely OFF (letting you see ALL items meeting the source as TLIs) and you turn it ON, some TLIs might disappear IF they can be found under other TLIs. (One exception but I won't get into that now)

PLaying with hierarchy settings never did anything to fields here. I'm not sure how it could since it's basically a "filter".

Elsewhere you wrote:

[quote]

This happens to me form time to time (rarely), but I'm generally guilty : accidental double tapping the pad or pressing the space bar for too long/hard double clicks and so checks/unchecks the field. Not saying that this is what happens to you , but mentionning it anyway.

Sometime (again, rarely), because I use scripts triggering custom popups, I will forget that an IQ popup is active and if I work on an item while the popup is unattended, it can have funny consequences. (E.g. a checked boxe not being recorded properly.) But I dont think that this applies to you.

Also, a long time ago, a grid/properties pane sync bug did that : checking/unchecking and nothing got recorded. Haven't seen it since. But I'm using v59 so it could be 62 related.

To summarize, when Items aren't displayed in one of my grids it's always for one or more of these reasons:

- A field value has changed because of some equations (row/column) and the item doesn't meet the source/filter anymore

- A Y/N field value has changed because the item was demoted and it doesn't meet the source/filter anymore (dis)allowing it to be displayed as TLI in other grid with similar or identical sources

- The source/filter of the grid was changed in ways that don't allow some items to be displayed

- The source is empty and items created aren't assigned any data that would allow them to be displayed in the present grid or even anywhere else

- Other filters are active or inactive and don't allow my items to show up

- Some glitch because of double tapping, popup interference, etc.

There might be other reasons, but... don't think so.

Edit : question : could you reproduce the problem with specific steps?

Disclaimer: "Testing IQ with the most advanced/complicated IQBase in the world". I.e. slower than average.

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

Armando,

Thanks for all the info. These were TLI from the beginning, so no demotions. Items had no parents or children. Other than renaming the grid/field and resetting the source to the new field name I made no changes I can recall. I'm just going to watch very closely and note any factors I can think of if it happens again. I did try to duplicate it by renaming a grid/field, resetting the source, playing with hierarchy settings and so forth, but could not duplicate it on demand.

Just happened again. A couple of hours ago I entered an item today titled "Folder Structure" in my grid titled "Personal Dashboard". I closed IQ. Now a couple hours later I open IQ and go to Personal Dashboard and the item is gone. I do a search and there it is, but it's lost the value for the grid. The item is a TLI and has 5 children. Screenshot attached.

Sorry to be posting nonsense on Christmas Eve but figured I'd do it while it was fresh in my mind.

Any point in repairing the database? It's never been suggested so I assume not, but figured I'd ask.

[quote=David_H]

Any point in repairing the database? It's never been suggested so I assume not, but figured I'd ask.

[/quote]

I've repaired my DB a few times when in doubt. There's no harm doing that. Do a backup, as usual.

Disclaimer: "Testing IQ with the most advanced/complicated IQBase in the world". I.e. slower than average.

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

Try to use CamelCase instead of spaces in your grid names and grid sources

IQ should handle spaces correctly, but I suspect there are some situations where it is not working, hence your issues

I'll continue to test with spaces, and hopefully be able to reproduce the issue, if that's the cause.

Thanks, worth trying, I changed all fields and grids to camel case, you know you'll be hearing from me if I see it again

Pierre, I don't know if some of your upgrades fixed whatever might have been happening here? I haven't noticed an item disappearing in a while. Today I logged in on my laptop. I looked for an item and it and several others were gone. I found one of them with a search and it wasn't it any grids. I thought "oh shit, it's happening again". Then I looked at the version I was on and it was 62. I upgraded to 66, reopened and there were all the items. So maybe the display mode change fixed this? Fingers crossed.

Sounds good:

you could edit the first post and provisionally add [SOLVED] or "fixed" or whatever to it :-)

[quote=Tom]

Sounds good:

you could edit the first post and provisionally add [SOLVED] or "fixed" or whatever to it :-)

[/quote]

For now I'm going to put "tentatively solved" :-). I've thought it was gone in the past only to have it show up again. Hopefully this time it's gone for good. When it would happen before it would be to top level items with full hierarchy on, so I'm not sure if it's the display mode change that (evidently) fixed it, or something else.

[quote=David_H]

[/quote]

Yes the display modes did change how items are filtered in/out

Disclaimer: "Testing IQ with the most advanced/complicated IQBase in the world". I.e. slower than average.

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

Sorry, I was referring back to this thread today and edited the name to "solved". I didn't realize just editing the name would make it jump to the top of "what's new" in the forum. Nothing to see here, please move alone