[Babase] Psion jpsamps and fpsamps in wrong tables

Karl O. Pinc kop at meme.com
Fri Mar 2 13:40:39 EST 2007


On 03/02/2007 11:44:37 AM, kfenn wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I'm going to open a can of worms that has been opened before, but we  
> need some input from Duke about current psion protocol and possible a  
> programmed "rule" to help clean up the psamps tables for users.

> However, the allowances in the jpsamps table have created problems  
> for users like Laurence.   If there is no rule enforcing membership  
> in only the adult table after a maturedate is listed, then the  
> individual can 'jump' back and forth between adult and juvenile  
> tables for potentially up to a year if the field team and/or data  
> managers are not vigilant.  Anyone trying to use these data risk not  
> capturing all the available data if they only search one table or the  
> other.   VEX is one example of this problem.
> 
> Even if we caution people that this is an existing condition of the  
> database, its hard to give users a simple work around ......you  
> cannot reliable say that once an individual has moved from the  
> juvenile table to the adult table (even if this doesn't prefectly  
> coincide with maturedate), henceforth it will always been found in  
> the adult table.  'Maturity' is a slow process so I can see allowing  
> recently matured individuals to remain in juvenile samples for a  
> while, but once an animal is moved to the adult table, it seems  
> important that they should remain there.

We could make it a rule that once you get on the adult table you
remain there, assuming that that solves Laurance's problem.
It's not entirely clear to me that it does.  It seems more sane
to just go back to using the maturity date as a cutoff.

The new system addresses this problem by storing both the adult and
juvenile data in POINTS_DATA.  You can easily see both adult
and juvenile data at the same time by ignoring SAMPLES.Stype.
You may be able to emulate this sort of behavior in foxpro
using the SQL UNION operator.

Does this help?

Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein



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