Multi-dimensional Lists

Multi-dimensional Lists

Hi,

I had given a 'green-light' for Gaev's suggestion for 'search & replace' functionality to be our next community-driven feature.

But in the event that the function might be anything less powerful than Regex itself, or take 'a considerable amount of dev time' to implement, which any good function normally would, I propose this feature instead:


Multi-dimensional lists with sort functionality.



Currently we can have a List Animals:

lion
fox
bear
gazelle
fish


BUT:

I would like to be able to have List Animals:


name        designation        ID

SherKhan Jungle King         100
lion           predator             10
gazelle     prey                    25
fox            predator             52
bear         predator             31
fish           prey                    14



AND be able to sort it by Animals.Name: 


name        designation        ID

bear         predator             31
fish           prey                    14
fox            predator             52
gazelle     prey                    25
lion           predator             10
SherKhan Jungle King         100


or sort by Animals.designation:


name        designation        ID

SherKhan Jungle King         100
lion           predator             10
fox            predator             52
bear         predator             31
gazelle     prey                    25
fish           prey                    14


or sort by Animals.designation then Animals.ID:


name        designation        ID

SherKhan Jungle King         100
lion           predator             10
bear         predator             31
fox            predator             52
fish           prey                    14
gazelle     prey                    25


I want to able to define different variable types for each 'sublist' .

List Animals { "name" = string, "Designation" = string, "ID" = long}

and it would now be:    For each sublistname  in Listname     e.g     For each  Designation in Animals  { leave the rhinos out of the party }


I think this would be the most powerful and yet 'not-so difficult to implement feature'  Zoho can give to developers.


Think about it!

With a single 'multi-dimensional list'   it is possible to populate an entire View,  One can easily write a custom 'backup' restore function. Or manipulate an entire view's data, without touching the original data itself !


I'm hoping this is one of the 'less difficult' features to implement.

As always, eager to see this materialize.

Thanks