# Exploring Discourse Data Explorer on my Sandbox

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/exploring-discourse-data-explorer-on-my-sandbox/353130>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Tags:** data-explorer\
**Created:** [February 19, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/exploring-discourse-data-explorer-on-my-sandbox/353130 "2025-02-19T17:09:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![TedJohnson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tedjohnson/32/486408_2.png) [@TedJohnson](https://meta.discourse.org/u/TedJohnson)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2025, 7:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/exploring-discourse-data-explorer-on-my-sandbox/353130/3 "2025-02-20T07:18:02Z")

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> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> If you don’t have a site with data, what are you looking for?

Good question. I’m interested in common use cases. If I were to administer a larger site, with lots of data, what would be the kinds of things I would use [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true) for?

I’m a non-Admin on an SMF site with 15+ years of data, and there have been numerous times that I have wanted query data, such as:

- How many times has USER1 commented on a post started by USER2 in CATEGORY
- How many new posts have there been in CATEGORY per month between DATE1 and DATE2

Want to see something funny? Here is a workaround I did in SMF to find all of topics I started in a particular board for a date range. SMF doesn’t really allow users to do that, so I had to get creative.

> **Summary**
>
> - I’m looking for any text in the subject that isn’t a reply, so `-"Re:"`
> - SMF doesn’t allow wildcards and won’t allow you to search for an empty text, and it won’t allow you to search only for exclusions. So I search for a nonsense word “runkerflifying” – a word that won’t appear in any posts – and I also exclude “runkerflifying”
> 
> ![Set_Search_Parameters](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/f/1/6/f16c2ef9ba916f9d9d4250732f671d2b0059a08e.png)

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