System.Windows.ThickFog.TryDispel

Not quite what I expected! August 3, 2010

I was ecstatic to see my collection come up in a sample program, but some details were not right.

1. None of the items from the “Collection properties” Excel worksheet were laid out satisfactorily (logo, title, copyright message), but no big deal, I fixed that later in Silverlight.
2. Some of my data did not appear in the filter panel even though I had checked the boxes correctly on the PivotCollection ribbon in Excel. I realised from looking at the .cxml file that the missing ones had a type of LongString rather than String, so I manually processed the .cxml. An expert (Jett) in the forum later told me that the tool generates LongString when the Excel column has WordWrap set. I think they need to reconsider that!
3. I was disappointed that the Description field is not searchable. I would have to copy the exact same data into another column and check “Keyword Filtering” on that. Another time, I would be more careful about my choice of “Name”. For quickness, I had just taken the first few characters of the Description as the Name.
4. I never did get multiple search values working. IMHO the tool did not work they way it should. See http://getsatisfaction.com/live_labs_pivot/topics/multiple_values_in_a_facet_not_working_like_i_expected