Mathematica dynamic to plot matrix data - dynamic

Question

I am trying to dynamically plot data contained in a matrix with Mathematica 7. The data is contained in it like this, obtained via a chemical model.
[year H He Li C ... C8H14+,Grain- ]
[0 0 0.03 0.009 1E-3 ... 0 ]
[100 .1 0.03 0.009 1E-3 ... 0 ]
[200 .2 0.03 0.009 1E-3 ... 0 ]
[300 .2 0.03 0.009 1E-3 ... 0 ]
[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ]
[1E6 .5 0.03 0.003 1E-8 ... 1E-25 ]
The truth is, the matrix dimensions are 2001*1476 (2000 steps and first line for name, and 1475 compounds + 1 column for year), very heavy.
I am trying to plot any compound with a concentration / year plot. This works
Manipulate[
ListLogLogPlot[data[[All, {1, i}]], PlotLabel -> data[[1, i]] ],
{{i, 2, "Compound"}, 2, compounds, 1}
]
where data is the matrix, and compounds a variable set at the number of modelized compounds (1475 here). "compound" is a label for the slider.
The problem is, the slider moves much to fast as a few centimeters browse through 1400+ items.
I tried to do a drop-down menu with
MenuView[
Table[
ListLogLogPlot[data[[All, {1, i}]],PlotLabel -> data[[1, i]]], {i, 2, compounds}
]
]
It also works, but this is a processor killer process (10+ minutes on a Xeon 16-core server executing 16 kernels), as Mathematica try to graph all plots before displaying any of them. Also the drop-down has no name, just a series of numbers (1 for hydrogen to 1475 for C8H14N+,Grain-), even though the plot has a name.
What I am searching a way to plot a graph only on demand, with a name display in the drop-down list (and if required H by default). OR a field where I can enter the name of the compound. This seems to be possible with Dynamic[ ] command, but I don't manage to make it work properly.
Thanks

Answer 1

Mike's suggestion is a good one but if you don't want to go to the effort of putting it in a database, use the ContinuousAction->False option.
testdata =
Join[{Table[ToString[series[i-1]], {i, 1475}]},
RandomReal[{1., 100.}, {2000, 1476}]];
Manipulate[
ListLogLogPlot[testdata[[All, {1, i}]],
PlotLabel -> testdata[[1, i]]], {{i, 2, "Compound"}, 2, 1475, 1},
ContinuousAction -> False]
To get a popup menu, use the {i,listofvalues} syntax for the controller specification.
Manipulate[
ListLogLogPlot[testdata[[All, {1, i}]],
PlotLabel -> testdata[[1, i]]], {i, Range[2, 1475]},
ContinuousAction -> False]
This works pretty fast on my system. (Two year old MacBook Pro)
A fancier version:
spec = Thread[Range[2, 1476] -> Table[ToString[series[i]], {i, 1475}]];
Manipulate[
ListLogLogPlot[testdata[[All, {1, i}]],
PlotLabel -> testdata[[1, i]]], {{i, 2, "Compound"}, spec},
ContinuousAction -> False]
And if all you want to do is step through the images, click on the little plus next to a slider controller to get more detailed controls.

Answer 2

For entering names in an InputField, you could do something like
compounds = Rest[data[[1]]];
Manipulate[
If[MemberQ[compounds, compound], i = Position[compounds, compound][[1, 1]] + 1];
ListLogLogPlot[data[[All, {1, i}]], PlotLabel -> data[[1, i]]],
{{i, 2}, None},
{{compound, data[[1, 2]], "Compound"}, InputField[#, String] &}]
Here, compounds is a list of all the names of the compounds. The If statement in Manipulate is to check whether the name entered in the InputField is a valid compound or not.
Others have already given you ways to create one big popup list. If you don't want to scroll through a popup list of 1475 compounds, you could consider splitting the popup list into sublists. For example, this would split the whole list of compounds into sublists of n=50 elements which might make it easier to navigate
compounds = Rest[data[[1]]];
With[{n = 50},
Manipulate[
i = 1 + Position[compounds, name][[1, 1]];
ListLogLogPlot[data[[All, {1, i}]], PlotLabel -> data[[1, i]]],
{{i, 2}, None},
{{indexlist, 1, "Indices"},
Table[i -> ToString[(i - 1) n + 1] <> " through " <>
ToString[Min[i n, Length[compounds]]],
{i, Ceiling[Length[compounds]/n]}], PopupMenu},
{{name, compounds[[1]], "Compound"},
compounds[[n (indexlist - 1) + 1 ;;
Min[Length[compounds], n indexlist]]], PopupMenu}
]
]
For example, for
data = Table[Join[{i}, RandomReal[{0, 1}, 1000]], {i, 1000}];
data = Join[{Prepend[Table["list " <> ToString[i], {i, 1000}], "year"]}, data];
this looks like

Answer 3

For data sets of this size I'd recommend (as optimal) storing it all in a database and using DatabaseLink to call stuff as required. Then link your controllers, such as popup menus, to SQLExecute code or other SQL functions. Fragments like this would be the sort of thing that would do the job:
DynamicModule[{x,data, ...},
Column[{
PopupMenu[Dynamic[x], {1 -> "category 1", 2 -> "category 2", 3 -> "category 3", ...}],
Dynamic[
data = SQLExecute[conn, "SELECT * FROM myDatabase.table WHERE my_id = `1`;", {x}];
ListLogLogPlot[data]
]
}]
]
In reality you may want to be adding additional popups and doing joins and so on.
EDIT
Alternative that doesn't use databases but uses input fields as requested:
DynamicModule[{x = "He", rules, y},
rules = Rule ### Transpose[{data[[1, All]], Range[Length[data[[1, All]]]]}];
Column[{
InputField[Dynamic[x], String],
Dynamic[
y = x /. rules;
ListLogLogPlot[data[[All, {1, y}]], PlotLabel -> data[[1, y]]]
]
}]
]
For rules lists of this size you'd probably want to use Dispatch I'd imagine. See how the timing goes for that. It looks like this is some sort of experiment you are running so my first choice remains dumping it into a DB.
FURTHER EDIT
If you're relying on input fields then you will need to account for clumsy typing by inserting a conditional so that Mma only attempts to plot if y is an integer.
If[IntegerQ[y],
ListLogLogPlot,
Spacer[0]
]