[Babase] Update trouble - Demog notes cannot have no note (no nulls allowed)?

Niki Learn nlearn at princeton.edu
Fri Sep 3 17:06:50 EDT 2010


Jeanne thinks 1 is best.  (2 is clunky and 3 is bad)

 

If that's okay by Susan as well, Karl please remove the not-null constraint
on the comment column in demog.  Then the upload can commence.

 

Thanks!

Niki

 

From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.Princeton.EDU
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.Princeton.EDU] On Behalf Of Niki Learn
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 4:26 PM
To: 'The Baboon Database Project'
Subject: [Babase] Update trouble - Demog notes cannot have no note (no nulls
allowed)?

 

I am working on the upload in test and have just come to the demography
notes portion.  Demography notes also include census entries and other
groups notes entries on nonstudy groups, where often the "note" would just
consist of "so-and-so is present in such-and-such group".

 

At the joint lab meeting we talked extensively about some revisions to how
we enter demography notes and what actually counts as a demography note.
One of the things we discussed was that these notes should be as un-wordy as
possible and that the ones that just say things like "so-and-so is present
in such-and-such group", which is already captured in the census record the
demography note creates, that we didn't have to have any words because they
were redundant.  So I implemented that for this upload and, just on the
first group, got this error 9 times:

 

CAUTION -- This error may not be real; prior row(s) of the uploaded file
were rejected:
Line 17: ERROR: null value in column "comment" violates not-null constraint

 

So, the note can't be blank.  I see three possible options

 

1)      Remove the rule saying that the comment column (the actual note)
cannot be null.  (This seems simplest.)

2)      Go back to "so-and-so is present in such-and-such group".  (Perhaps
preferred  for some reason?)

3)      Or I could enter those other groups entries the way we enter census
data - it just might have a lot of "N" entries in the file I upload (but
babase reads "N" as "don't create a record for this animal on this date" so
it wouldn't create extra records or anything like that).  The downside there
being that if there were actual demography notes to go with any of them I
would need a census record and a demography note but it comes out the same
in babase.  Also, entering them as demog notes tells you the reference
source (i.e., is there an actual census sheet in the other groups binder or
is it an other groups note within one of the study group binders and which
study group is it with).

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks,

Niki 

 

 

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