Any hint on how to sort values in an attribute that has Null/empty/blank values?
The Sorter doesn't have the option to move nulls to the last in the attribute. (or sometimes we need to move nulls at the beginning)..
Just to make it easier for the user not every time has to mouse scroll or sort the attribute to reach the values.
FME 2013 SP4
Output Format: File or SDE geodatabase
one workaround could be to use first make a copy of the sorting attribute, then use the NullAttributeReplacer on the copy and replace the null values with something that either sorts to the top or to the end. Sort on this attribute, but display only the original attribute.
David
I have a dataset where several features (i.e. rows) may be different versions of the same feature. One version will be the current one and the rest historic. I'm trying to use Sorter ahead of DuplicateFilter to ensure the current version of the feature enters the DuplicateFilter first and is therefore retained via the Unique port. The previous versions should all go to the Duplicate port and can be ignored
I'm also trying to do the sort so that I can choose "Yes" to Input is Ordered in DuplicateFilter for improved performance. So far I have had to replace null values with X in one attribute and sort on 3 attributes to achieve this which may negate any performance gain from Input is Ordered = "Yes" in DuplicateFilter (I'll have to re-null those X values afterwards as well!). I've yet to run comparative tests on the real data.
I've suggested an idea for Sorter...
https://knowledge.safe.com/idea/41576/sorter-options-for-handling-null-missing-empty-str.html