User Guide

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Chapter 3
you may want to run the same query to see sales figures for different fiscal quarters.
Place your cursor in any Expression cell, and click Prompt for Value to create a prompt.
Note:Ifyou
use random sampling, aggregation (available in distributed mode with
SPSS Server) is not available.
Creating a P
arameter Query
Use the Prom
pt for Value dialog box to create a dialog box that solicits information
from users each time someone runs your query. It is useful if you want to query the
same data source using different criteria.
Figure 3-9
Prompt for Value dialog box
To build a prompt, you need to enter a prompt string and a default value. The prompt
string is displayed each time a user runs your query. It should specify the kind of
information to enter, and, if the user is not selecting from a list, it should give hints
about how the input should be formatted. Forexample,“EnteraQuarter(Q1,Q2,
Q3, ...)”.
Allow user to select value from list. If this is selected, you can limit the user to the
values you place here, which are separated by returns.
Data type. Specify the data type here, either Number, String,orDate.