What does The Crosstabber do?
Sesame comes with built-in support for columnar and freeform type reports only. With The Crosstabber you can add real crosstab reports to your databases in just a few minutes. If you've used crosstab reports in Q&A, output from The Crosstabber is similar. You can specify Totals, Counts, Averages or a combination of these — at the time you run the crosstab report — to get the kind of crosstab you're after.

What exactly is a crosstab report?
A crosstab report is a kind of totals-only or summary report. In Microsoft Excel, it's called a "pivot table"). When setting up the crosstab, you choose a field for the COLUMN, a field for the ROW, and a SUMMARY field (usually a money or number field) to summarize the other two fields on. A crosstab report gives you a compact summary such as sales by month by customer or employees by department by gender. See a couple of sample crosstab reports

How many databases or forms can I use The Crosstabber with?
As many as you like. You can add Crosstabber reports to any form in any database as long as you know which fields you want to use for the COLUMN, ROW and SUMMARY. When you create any report in Sesame, it becomes part of the database and application. Users who have access to the application and reports in general can run its Crosstabber reports just like any other reports.

How much data can a Crosstabber report handle?
As supplied, Crosstabber reports support up to 600 columns, 600 rows and 100,000 records. These limits can, if needed, be adjusted by the person who sets up the report.

How long does it take to set up a Crosstabber report?
About 10 minutes for someone familiar with Sesame's Report Designer. The Crosstabber report layout is standardized or generic, meaning  that every Crosstabber report uses the same exact report layout elements. The only differences are the database fields to which you bind the ROW, COL and SUM elements and any optional custom formatting you may want to add yourself. The programming for Crosstabber reports is also generic — you simply import the program from the supplied Crosstabber.pgm text file right into the report design. It's easy. the supplied instructions tell you how.

What do I need to use The Crosstabber?
Sesame Database Manager 1.1.4 or later and a database containing data that's suitable for crosstabulation. The sample Sesame applications that come with The Crosstabber will give you some examples of the kinds of crosstab reports you can add to your own applications.

Can I get free technical support if I have any questions?
Yes — toll-free at 800-780-5474 (US/Canada), 949-722-9127 outside the US. Or by email.

I've never designed a report in Sesame and I'd rather not deal with it. Can you add a crosstab report to my database for me?
Sure — call us  toll-free at 800-780-5474 (US/Canada) or 949-722-9127 outside the US and we'll tell you how we'll do it and what it will cost. (In this case, you will not need to purchase the Crosstabber package.)

What the Crosstabber package includes...

• The July and August 2006 issues of Inside Sesame. The July 2006 issue introduces the original Crosstabber and the August 2006 issue covers the more advanced and faster Crosstabber2. There's much information in these two articles about crosstab reports in general and how The Crosstabber works. You can also refer to these articles for information on custom column/row grouping and formatting.
   

• A CROSSTABBER2.PGM file containing the generic drop-in Crosstabber2 program. You simply import this program into the report design. You do not have to modify or even understand the programming unless you are an advanced Sesame user or developer who wants to customize the programming for a particular crosstab report
   

• Sample Sesame applications with Crosstabber reports already in them. You can inspect these reports in Sesame Designer and use Designer's Preview mode to run them before adding crosstabs to your own databases.
   

• Instructions on setting up a Crosstabber report in any database.

How to get The Crosstabber for Sesame*

The Crosstabber for Sesame package is available for $69, delivered to you by email attachment. Order it

Questions? Call toll-free 800-780-5474 (US/Canada) or 949-722-9127, or email us.

*Offers are made exclusively by Marble Publications, Inc., publisher of Inside Sesame.
Marble Publications is not part of Lantica Software, the maker of Sesame Database Manager.

RIGHT: This report crosstabulates salaries by department and gender. At a glance, it shows the number of male and female employees in each department, along with the total salaries and average salary. Here, Gender is the COLUMN field, Department is the ROW field, and Salary is the SUMMARY field.

BELOW: The report shown below crosstabulates sales by customer and year/month. In this crosstab, Sale Date is the COLUMN field, Customer is the ROW field, and Sale Amount is the SUMMARY field. This crosstab has a custom column format that groups the sales by year/month.

Both reports show the kind of output that The Crosstabber actually generates in Sesame.