I am currently working on an EPM solution and one of the aggregations that needs to be done depends on a string column value “Device Class” shown below.
I am aware that if the column is not of type number, then the only solution is to use equationValue, though the functions are basic boolean functions that will not help here since a device class of type RTR cannot be counted using ==, !=, >=, or <=. Is there a way to have a contains boolean for the aggregation, so it simply checks if RTR is present in the column value? Or will I need to get creative and have the collector element send the data so the aggregation is done in a QAction in the EPM manager or create additional columns for each individual device class type and fill it in with either a 1 or 0 signifying it belongs to that class?
Aggregating with wildcards on a certain string value is currently not possible.
The most easy thing to do is add an extra column with value one or zero to indicate whether or not to perform the aggregation.
If you want to save out some memory and avoid this extra column then you might want to consider making that device class parameter a (numeric) discreet type parameter and then use allowValues to include all the items that you want. This way an extra column is avoided and memory contains only numbers instead of a full string value. In the QAction you could then use enums, which makes the code more readable and less sensitive for typos. Downside is that you need to know all the discreet values beforehand and if there’s ever a new possibility added then you need to modify the driver to be able to support it.