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

Susan Alberts alberts at duke.edu
Fri Sep 3 17:31:08 EDT 2010


I don't completely understand what situations produce a demog note  
that has a group and an ID number but no explanation–I presume that  
this arises with other groups censuses? And sometimes with regular  
group censuses?

If I'm understanding correctly then I agree with Jeanne; go with 1.

Susan
On Sep 3, 2010, at 5:06 PM, Niki Learn wrote:

> 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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------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Professor of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338,  
Durham NC 27708. Phone 919-660-7272, FAX 919-660-7293







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