[Babase] conference call update
kfenn
kfenn at princeton.edu
Wed May 2 13:19:29 EDT 2007
Susan and Jeanne,
Sorry it took me so long to get this email together....
We are currently awaiting the error output from the conversion run that
is running with the updated FoxPro db Leah provided on Monday. Karl
sent an email to the listserve earlier noting some early errors with
agonisms, groomings, and the psion setupid. Susan has provided guidance
on these issues, so these seem to be in the process of being resolved.
Unfortunately, Karl also reports that we are getting more Ranks errors
with this conversion. These are new errors not present in the last run,
and their origin is uncertain. I will look at them once the error
report is available. Karl speculates that they are linked to the start
and end times for groups and may be relatively straightforward fixes. I
intend to fix these rank errors before I make the changes to the cycles
tables. I won't have a timeline for completing the ranks corrections
and cycles tables changes until I get a good look at the errors.
Once the above changes/fixes occur, we have one more speedbump with
FoxPro before we can move exclusively to PPA. The new files of "old"
census data that Jen Foreman has entered is in dbf form. Karl says
trying to do an upload of this into PPA is not going to be easy....the
upload is best done in FoxPro. I agree, but I can forsee that this
update may generate a substantial number of new errors when we run
through another conversion given that such a large bulk of data is
replacing old data.
If we end up with a lot of new errors, Jeanne and Susan may need to make
a call on how to proceed with the 06B update (that is, whether to use
FoxPro or PPA, and how important this additional census data is versus
getting the 06B update done before my maternity leave starts).
Obviously, I can do the 06B update in FoxPro at any time. Right now we
are having problems doing uploads to the views in PPA, and this is
necessary for both the Duke and Princeton parts of the demog update.
Karl is going to work on solving the problem this week and we are all in
charge of checking in with him about progress... however the new
census-related errors need to be fixed in FoxPro before we can think
about doing the demog update in PPA.
I think Karl, Lacey and I agreed that the sensible way to proceed is to
take these initial steps to update the FoxPro db and then revisit this
issue of error correction and the 06B update with Susan and Jeanne as
soon as we have a sense of the extent of the errors. I have asked Lacey
to send me the census files to be uploaded since I've worked with the
upcen and the buildmembers programs before.
So just to summarize the sequence of tasks for the moment:
1) Tabby review conversion errors v12 tomorrow and try to estimate how
long it will take to make corrections
2) Tabby and Lacey make corrections to ranks, agonisms, psion (Karl
continues work on updates PPA views this week)
3) Karl runs another conversion (hopefully errors are limited)
4) Tabby make cycles corrections in FoxPro
5) Another conversion and review of errors from cycles corrections
6) Tabby uploads the new census files
7) Another conversion and review of errors from new census files
8) Check in with Jeanne and Susan about timeline for census error
corrections and 06B demog update.
Lacey and Karl, please add anything if I have not presented the issues
clearly. There are a lot of pieces here.
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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