Corrupted file/DB by moving partly-empty column "to beginning"

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.Take a file with a partially empty nth column (e.g. Column 1 has names, 
Column 2 has phone numbers and is incomplete)
2.Move that incomplete column "to beginning"
3.Partially empty records will be dropped -- export/import of file will then 
fail. Also, faceting etc. will fail... and unresponsive script errors will 
occur.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I had 19839 records, which dropped to 14905 after that one action. Then any 
operations went through unresponsive script errors and/or gave unexpected 
results (filters "worked" but displayed more than the filtered entries.)

What version of Google Refine are you using?
2

What operating system and browser are you using?
MacBook Pro & Firefox 

Is this problem specific to the type of browser you're using or it happens in 
all the browsers you tried?
I believe it is browser independent -- more of a DB error. Same thing happened 
in Chrome. When I tried to Extract Operations history (~1800) in Firefox 
though, it failed (Chrome worked).

Please provide any additional information below.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by rhiannon...@gmail.com on 3 Feb 2011 at 9:43

[GoogleCodeExporter]

When you moved the partially empty column to the beginning, Refine interpreted 
the empty cells as marking "sub-records" which were indented below the main 
record.

If the data isn't really record oriented, you can switch to using the "row" 
display mode instead of the "record" display mode.  Alternatively, you can undo 
the operation or move the column to a different location.

The performance slowdown is due to the fact that in record display mode you're 
now displaying records with many many rows making the grid much bigger and 
tougher for your browser to handle.

Original comment by tfmorris on 18 Sep 2012 at 7:18

• Changed state: Invalid