Select
Overview
The Select tool is similar to the SQL SELECT clause. Use this tool to select fields from one or more input tables. The selected set of fields becomes a single output table. In addition to selecting input fields, you can also rename the selected fields.
This tool is useful for a wide variety of tasks. For example, you can:
Tag each input record with a unique ID field by connecting your input table and a Generate Sequence tool as inputs to a Select tool. See Creating a unique ID.
Rename fields of a table so that they match other tables (or some standard form). This is especially useful for mailing-list merges.
Recover the Left and Right records from tables from the output of a Join by connecting Select tools to the Join output. This is useful if you have joined two tables to perform inter-table calculations.
Note that if you use the Select tool to merge multiple inputs with different numbers of records, the resulting number of records will be equal to that of the shortest input.
Select tool configuration parameters
The Select tool has one set of configuration parameters in addition to the standard execution options.
Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
Source | The input source in which the field is found. The first (leftmost) source is 0, the second is 1, and so on. This is optional and defaults to 0. |
Field | Name of the input field. |
Select | Select to include the field on output; clear to omit the field. |
Rename on output | Name assigned to the field on output. This must be unique among all output fields. |
Configure the Select tool
Select the Select tool, and then go to the Configuration tab on the Properties pane.
Select each input field you want to appear in the output using its check box. Clear the check boxes of fields you do not want to appear in the output. Select Select fields to choose from:
Sort A-Z
Sort Z-A
Reverse
Select All
Select None
Select Non-conflicting
Select Highlighted
De-select Highlighted
Toggle Highlighted
Rename Conflicting
Remove Non-existent
Add Prefix to Highlighted
Add Suffix to Highlighted
Optionally, in the Rename on Output column, type a new name for any fields that you want to assign a different output name. For an easy way to rename all fields uniformly, see About the Rename tool.
Optionally, select Automatically select new fields to auto-select fields that may be added when you change the input to the Select tool. This is useful if you are creating a project for repeated use and think the data you are processing may have fields added in the future.
Optionally, select Input record counts must match to require that multiple inputs have the same number of records.
If this option is selected and the record counts do not match, an error is reported. If this option is not selected and the record counts do not match, the number of records output will be equal to the minimum number of records on all inputs.
Optionally, select the Connection Order tab and adjust the order of input connections.
The Select tool displays input fields by Source (such as Source #1 and Source #2) with numbers assigned sequentially from the leftmost (or topmost) input. You can change that order on the Connections tab.
Optionally, go to the Execution tab, and then set Web service options.