[Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase

Niki Learn nlearn at princeton.edu
Mon Mar 22 16:07:44 EDT 2010


Babase already says his matured date is 1997-05-01.?  How did this even
throw an error about MCE's when BOZ doesn't have a rnkdate?  Shouldn't it
ignore males where there is no rnkdate??  And females and juveniles for that
matter since they don't have rnkdates.  Karl does this SQL update statement
do if there's no rnkdate?  

 

So two mounts in March 1996.  Males are not supposed to get mounts recorded
until they are mature either, right? 

 

As for how it got in.wouldn't this data have been entered in FoxPro and
converted to Babase, presumably without full Babase controls in place?
Maybe there wasn't a rule to keep it from being entered into FoxPro?  If
that's the case then maybe we just need to delete the erroneous mounts, yes?
And fix the error message.  ha ha ha.

 

From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.Princeton.EDU
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.Princeton.EDU] On Behalf Of Lacey Maryott
Roerish
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 3:39 PM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase

 

I have now run into an even stranger error, which I think we should try to
integrate into a conference call. It looks like babase has a rule that MCE's
cannot occur before a male has reached testicular enlargment.  So, when I
tried to move the dates, BOZ threw an error.

update maturedates
set matured = rnkdate(matured);


SQL error:

ERROR:  BOZ: 1997-05-01: Female's mounts, consortships, and ejaculations
must not come before the maturity date

In statement:
update maturedates
set matured = rnkdate(matured);

 

Lines 1-2: ERROR: BOZ: 1997-05-01: Female's mounts, consortships, and
ejaculations must not come before the maturity date

At first I thought this was an issue with the function, since the function
is named rnkdate and we are messing with maturedates table. However, BOZ
doesn't even have a rankdate.  He matured in May 1997, has NO MCE in 1997. I
looked back and he does have some M records in 1996. So, it seems like what
we are really catching here is the fact that someone data was forced into
babase and this particular error was missed later on.

 

I'm also not sure why the error message is alerting us to a problem with
females havng these lines when BOZ is a male.

 

Anyway, I think we did uncover another error and I think it merits some
discussion. I Am going to proceed to work on the update until we can all
talk about this. 

 

It looks like we already need to reschedule Thursday's as Susan's schedule
has a conflict...

 

Let me know what you think

Lacey

 

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Jeanne Altmann <altj at princeton.edu> wrote:

Excellent, thanks Lacey

jeanne

 

From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Lacey Maryott
Roerish
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 10:59 AM


To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase

 

I did some checking this morning and there don't seem to be glaring errors
between maturedates and rankdates tables.  No maturedates occur after
rankdates(which was to be expected given babase contraints, but I just
wanted to check). All of the matdates falling in the middle of a month are
equal to their rankdates counterpart, or occur in different years, which
would would expect to see with the 'On' ranked dates.

 

I am going to go ahead and roll all maturedates back to the first, and then
all rankdates.  From there we can pick at larger errors like rankdates and
ranktypes not matching up. This at least standardizes this part of it!

 

Cheers

Lacey

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Susan Alberts <alberts at duke.edu> wrote:

Most maturedates that don't fall on the first of the month are 'by' dates
but a number are 'on' dates from earlier decades. These used to be done with
dates other than the first of the month -- there is nothing wrong with them,
but they can be changed.

For rankdates, indeed most "on" dates are first of the month, but a few are
not. There were some instances where we actually saw the day on which rank
was attained, and entered those dates. All are from earlier decades and all
can be changed.

Susan



On Mar 19, 2010, at 4:22 PM, Jeanne Altmann wrote:

Ah, yes. I assume all of these are 'by' dates.  If not. Something more is
wrong. Thanks for the update on progress.
jeanne

From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Lacey Maryott
Roerish
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 4:15 PM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase

Susan, Jeanne, Niki and Karl

   I am running into some problems with changing the rankdates to the first
of the month.  There is a rule that the matured date has to be less than or
equal to rank date (With good reason). However, all of the maturedates that
also occur mid-month are throwing an error. So, it looks as though I will
have to roll those back as well. Will pick at this and try to fix all of the
maturedates before rolling the rankdates back.

   I spoke with Karl about this and there is a work-around that could fix
the majority while skipping the ones that violate this rule, but it kind of
seems like if I am going to be elbow deep in the data anyway, I should just
fix the whole problem at once.   Does this fit with how princeton feels
about the timeline of this project?  I expect I can have it all fixed my
mid-morning monday, I just want to do some cross-checking of maturedates and
rankdates and make sure there aren't any glaring errors before i change a
whole bunch of data in 2 tables.

Let me know

Lacey

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Jeanne Altmann <altj at princeton.edu> wrote:


-----Original Message-----
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Karl O.
Pinc
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 3:15 PM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase

On 03/19/2010 01:48:28 PM, Lacey Maryott Roerish wrote:
> Susan, (et al)
>
>       Jeanne, Karl, Niki and I just finished discussing how to handle
> some
> recent issues discovered in babase related to Rankdates.  It can be
> difficult to extract number of males on a given date if some males
> rankdates
> occur in the middle of the month.  For this reason,  I will be
> changing all
> rankdates (Both BY and ON) to the beginning on the month using a
> function
> Karl had previously developed.  This will simply make querying
> easier,
> and
> will also sync up rankdates data with actual rank data, which are all
> recorded on the 1st of the month.

We will also then put a rule in requiring that rankdates.rnkdate be
on the first of the month.  (Once Lacey let's me know she's done
changing the data.)

The problem has been that nobody ever uses the rnkdate() function,
which sets a date to the first of the month, when comparing
ranks.rnkdate with rankdates.ranked.  They'll still have to use this
function when doing arbitrary date comparisons against either
ranks.rnkdate or, now, rankdates.ranked so we're not really
making the problem go away, but are pushing it farther to the
fringes.  In any case the ranks.rnkdate/rankdate.ranked problem
has been discussed every few years so it's clear there's a
problem there that this change will make go away.


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

Agreed; it will remain a potentially valuable function that we need to
remember the situations you note.  However, with the proposed change, we
will have the ranked-by date regularized, which is good, and we will
make moot the most common use for the function. Thanks Karl for the
patient reminder about the function and all for brainstorming on the
various issues.

jeanne

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-- 
- -
Lacey K. Maryott Roerish
Alberts Lab
Department of Biology
Duke University
ph: 919-660-7306
fax: 919-660-7293
Lacey.Maryott at duke.edu
_______________________________________________
Babase mailing list
Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu
http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase

 

--------------------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Dept of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC 27708,
919-660-7272 (Ph), 919-660-7293 (Fax)





_______________________________________________
Babase mailing list
Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu
http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase




-- 
- -
Lacey K. Maryott Roerish
Alberts Lab
Department of Biology
Duke University
ph: 919-660-7306
fax: 919-660-7293
Lacey.Maryott at duke.edu


_______________________________________________
Babase mailing list
Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu
http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase




-- 
- -
Lacey K. Maryott Roerish
Alberts Lab
Department of Biology
Duke University
ph: 919-660-7306
fax: 919-660-7293
Lacey.Maryott at duke.edu

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