
Thanks to Oscar for finding this
excellent article discussing how to present large sets of data in tables, in a usable way, through the appropriate use of controls, filters and sorting mechanisms. The author does a great job of illustrating all the presentation methods with diagrams and real-world examples from the web.
When tables are chock full of information, it’s quite likely that people will need to filter out information that isn’t relevant to their queries. In such cases, exposing a complete list of data filters is an effective way of quickly communicating what refinement options are available.