Zing now supports typeahead for values

We’ve got an update that we think you’ll appreciate. We’ve added typeahead for values, making queries more straightforward and accurate. Here’s how this new feature can help streamline your work.

Key features

Typeahead for Values, Fields, and Tables

We now have typeahead for values, on top of fields and tables. As you’re typing a question, Zing automatically suggests relevant values, fields and tables by doing a reverse index search. So, instead of scanning your entire dataset every time you search, we maintain an inverted index that maps each word or value to its occurrences. This drastically speeds up the search process.

For instance, if you have a huge dataset with similar values across different fields and tables, you don’t need to remember where each value is located.

The significant advantage of this feature is disambiguation. If you’re trying to find customer addresses, do you want the billing address or shipping address? Zing’s typeahead will prompt you with these suggestions, letting you decide the exact value you need.

We could ask, “Show me customers who bought action or foreign films and live in California.”

As you’re typing, Zing shows you:

• ‘action’ is a value in the field ‘categoryname’ in the table ‘category’
• ‘foreign’ is a value in the field ‘categoryname’ in the table ‘category’
• ‘CA’ is a value in the field ‘state’ in the table ‘customers’

And if you decide to switch categories from ‘action’ to ‘horror’ mid-query, Zing will update its suggestions, now showing you:

• ‘horror’ is a value in the field ‘categoryname’ in the table ‘category’

This helps you select the exact value you need without recalling its location. It helps avoid confusion and ensures you’re querying the right data, even in large datasets with overlapping values.

We do this by creating a reverse index search on data values to allow you to get contextual type-ahead results for values, fields, and tables.

Magic Model for joins

For the question we asked above, it actually requires a join between the ‘customers’ and ‘category’ table. Typically, with other BI tools, you’d have to manually create this join in order for your question to be answered correctly. Zing’s Magic Model builds these joins on the fly using the schema and column attributes of your data set, removing the hassle of pre-creating joins.

Fully customizable results

You might want to tweak a few things after getting your results. Earlier, we asked “Show me customers who bought action or foreign films and live in California.” Now, what if you want to look for customers who purchased horror films in California? We can do this simply by going back to the search bar and editing the question.

You can edit the chart types, filters and questions without starting from scratch. This flexibility ensures your data is exactly how you need it, when you need it.

No predefining relationships

Unlike legacy tools where you’ll have to predefine relationships in your data set and create data models, Zing allows you to ask questions immediately after connecting a data source, helping you query faster with no data preparation.

Available now

Zing’s SeeAhead is available starting today on Zing’s Enterprise plan.