[Babase] Re: min_max file revised

kfenn kfenn at princeton.edu
Tue Mar 17 15:46:33 EDT 2009


Per our call with Jeanne today, here is a summary of decisions regarding 
Karl's questions:

Karl O. Pinc wrote:
>
> On 01/30/2009 10:32:48 AM, kfenn wrote:
>> Hi Karl,
>>
>> I went ahead and updated the min_max file fixing all the places where 
>> precipitation was 0 but should have been NULL.  Per Jeanne, I also 
>> deleted data from 1971-1976 with origins unknown.  I also corrected 
>> the upper gauge /low gauge confusion, relabeling the upper as simply 
>> Baboon Camp B and removing the lower to a separate excel file, should 
>> anyone want to run a comparision between the two at some point.  This 
>> should give you a pretty good file to work with for working out the 
>> integration to Babase 2.  I don't know immediately of any other major 
>> changes that need to be made.  I'll make you a support table that 
>> gives abbreviations and notes for all the stations and send that 
>> along when I can.  The abbreviations, in case you need them now, will 
>> be:
>
> Attached is a file with computed average times.  Please check it
> for sanity.
>
Will do and will send an email when I've done so.

> I notice a couple of other issues:
>
> Some times are " ", not NULL.  (I've treated these
> as NULL.)
This is likely a by-product of the excel function I used to assign NULL 
to both NULL and blank cells.  The " " should be NULL as far as I know.
>
> What does it mean when there's date, time and location
> but all the other info is NULL?  We can put these into
> the DB, there's nothing that says that a WRREADINGS row
> must have any data (TEMPNINS row, TEMPMAXS row, or
> RAINGAUGES row), but do we really want to?
>
All datasheets have rows for each date as "placeholders" although the 
rain and temp gauges are not always read each day.  These blank rows 
should be deleted but we need to retain the information about how many 
days it has been since a temp or rain gauge reading because of the way 
the min/max thermometers and the rain gauge function.  This calculation 
should actually be done in the RGspan column, as you pointed out.  
However, we agreed to keep the notes.  There is a problem with the notes 
in that they were not consistently entered on the day FOLLOWING a span 
of missing days.  Sometimes they were entered on the last day where all 
values were null.  You have indicated you can do programmer magic on the 
spreadsheet to insure that that notes appear on the day FOLLOWING a span 
of missing days.  This makes Tabby very happy.
> Some of the observer columns contain more than one
> observer.  The database won't like this.  We could
> make new rows in the OBSERVERS table to mean
> "any one of these 3 observers" and use a single
> code for that.  It's a good solution until
> somebody accidentally uses the wrong code
> and we get 3 observers instead of 1. But then,
> anybody can put in a wrong code at any time anyhow.
> (Papio's broken at the moment.  I can't tell
> if we've already this sort of stuff in OBSERVERS.)
>
This is a by-product of the way older datasheets were setup, where 
observers for the month were simply listed at the top.
We agreed that the first observer in the list should be used.  The 
observer initials might be two or three letters, so please use the comma 
to separate the initials...and let us know if there are places where a 
comma wasn't used to differentiate initials.

> Will the regular input have the codes for the
> locations instead of the spelled out descriptions?
> If it matters can I ask that you use a code?
>
Tabby can do this for all future uploads.
> I don't see any "averages" where there's no data
> for the month or year and the time 7:00 is used.
> Is this right?
>
Per the first paragraph of this email, Jeanne opted to removed the 71-76 
data with origins unknown.  This probably took care of those long span 
of days or months without data.  Once the gauge was established at Ol 
Tukai, the reading were pretty regular.
>
> Karl <kop at meme.com>
> Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
>                  -- Robert A. Heinlein
Thanks,
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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