Using the Data Set Search Assistant

The Data Set Search assistant is an interactive graphical interface for searching built-in and online data sources. The Data Set Search assistant is inserted into a task region of the current worksheet and can be initialized in one of the following ways:

Figure 1.1: Help Search Box Results

When the Data Set Search assistant is inserted into the Maple worksheet without a search term, the following is displayed:

Interacting with the Data Set Search

The first step of using the Data Set Search assistant is to enter a search term into the search field on the first line and then click the Search button. For example, if we search for 'Gold' using the assistant, the following is shown. Note that the ordering of results may change upon re-execution.

The search results are shown above.

The Data Set Search assistant is divided into 4 sections: search query, search results, filter, and assignment and reference:

i. As described above, the search query section has a text area for entering a search keyword and a search button for performing a search.

ii. The search results section shows all matching data sets for the original query. You can scroll through pages of results using the arrows directly below the search field. More information on the currently selected dataset is shown in the text area directly beside the list of the first ten results. In the case that the search result is from an online data source, the data source is shown as a hyperlink that if followed opens a web browser and shows details on the source of the data set.

iii. The filter section filters the chosen data set by time period, time frequency, and allows for selection of columns of the data set. Each of these is customizable and can be altered to return the desired filtered data set. For example, in the above, the current filter would retrieve daily data from the "Gold/BITCOIN Price", in the time period of 2014-04-14 to 2015-11-24, for both columns of data, "Price" and "Value".

Note that the "Start" and "End" dates must be entered in a YYYY-MM-DD format.

iv. The fourth section gives details on the assigned variable name as well as the permanent data reference to the selected data set.

- 'Assign data set to': The assigned variable name is customizable. In this example, the selected "Gold/BITCOIN Price" data set is assigned to the variable name 'ds0'. Note that for the assigned variable any filters applied in the filter section are applied to the returned variable.

- 'Permanent Data Set Reference': The final line in the Data Set Search assistant gives the permanent Maple command to retrieve the unfiltered data set. Commands such as SetColumns, SetFromDate, SetToDate, and SetFrequency can be applied to the results of executing the permanent reference in order to filter the data set. For example, the command to retrieve the unfiltered data set is:

This can be filtered using the SetFromDate command: