[Babase] how to get in the missing Mdates

kfenn kfenn at princeton.edu
Wed May 20 14:13:13 EDT 2009


  Hi again Karl,

I found guidelines for rebuilding the auto Mdate for an individual: 
SELECT rebuild_automdates('FOO'). This seems to be something we could do 
to fix the missing mdates that are prohibiting the upload of sexskin 
data. There is a warning however:
Warning
This routine should not be run while triggers (automatic data 
validation) are enabled.

Aren't the validations always on?

The documentation also suggests that we can make our own CYCPOINTS row 
with an mdate and a source code of 'A' to make the database think that 
it assigned an automatic Mdate. Is this a better way to solve the 
problem? I'm finding conflicting suggestions in the documentation. The 
AUTO MDATES docs makes it sound like it's OK, but the CYCPOINTS page 
specificially says this may is a bad idea.


    Automatic Mdate Generation

A Mdate automatically generated from a Ddate will be removed when any of 
the above conditions are no longer met, or when another Mdate is 
automatically generated for the Ddate.^[108 
<http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch04s05.html#ftn.id2947838>] 
More precisely, it is not a Mdate automatically generated from a Ddate 
that will be removed but rather any Mdate will be removed that has a 
Source 
<http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch03s10.html#Cycpoints-Source> 
of A, and that post-dates the Ddate, and that has no Mdates, Tdates, or 
Ddates, or periods of no observation (see CYCGAPS 
<http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch03s08.html>) on the 
interval between the Ddate and the “automatic” Mdate. Babase cannot 
distinguish manually entered Mdates with a Source 
<http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch03s10.html#Cycpoints-Source> 
of A from automatically generated Mdates. Therefore it is not just 
automatically generated Mdates that will be removed.


    CYCPOINTS (Female Sexual Cycle Events)

Only Mdates are automatically assigned, and only Mdates may have a 
Source of A (Automatic). Mdates may be manually given a Source of A, 
although this may well not be a good idea as the Automatic Mdate 
Generation 
<http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch04s05.html> process 
may remove the A row at any point. It is even less of a good idea 
because automatic Mdates are /not/ validated, so it is quite simple to 
enter an invalid automatic Mdate.



BTW, the documentation for Rebuilding AutoMdates says CENSUS in a place 
where I think it should be CYCPOINTS. There are no Mdates anywhere on 
the census table...


    Description

This procedure rebuilds the automatic Mdates 
<http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch04s05.html> on the 
CENSUS <http://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system_html/ch03s13.html> 
table for a specific individual.



Thanks again,
Tabby


-- 
Tabby Fenn
Research Assistant

Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
401 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544

609 258-6898 (Ph)
609 258-2712 (Fx)



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