[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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