The data tool enables displaying and editing of data in a supported fashion. Editing of an existing row is only possible, if the table has a unique index (usually this should be the primary key) or was created WITH OIDS (which is deprecated but still works). The column used as primary key is marked green. If a row was changed, it is marked yellow. To save the row, press Ctrl-S, the toolbar button or select a different row which triggers an automatic save.
To insert a new row into the table, edit the last row marked * and save it.
The filter panel gives you control over how the data tool retrieves the data from the table. You may limit the row count (which is set to 100 by default), change the display of columns (check them on or of, or drag them to the position you like), and change the sorting. To use a column sorted descending, double click it.
To re-read the data, use F5 or the toolbar button.
If the server is instrumented properly, the data tool can store sql presets for the specific table, i.e. a set of filter parameters that you use frequently. The presets are stored in the database, which makes them available whenever you connect using Admin4, regardless of the workstation you're currently using. Just name the preset, and save. If the preset already exists, it will be overwritten. The preset contains all filter settings, including the manual SQL query (see next paragraph).
If a preset called "default" is present, it is loaded when the dialog is started, replacing the predefined default settings, and executed immediately.
For advanced users, it is possible to specify the query the data tool uses to retrieve the data from the table.
WARNING: Please note that this function is potentially dangerous: For inserting and updating the data, the tool always use the metadata of the table you started to view, even your manually created query accesses another one.
In the example above, the timestamp column contains a unix timestamp, which isn't nice to read. So the manual query does quite what we did with the filter above, but adds a "When" column which contains the to_timestamp converted unix time. This column is displayed with grey background to indicate that it's not editable.