Ralph Hartley wrote:
I agree with what Ralph has written in this message.
> The more I have thought about CaveXML, the more I am drawn to the
> conclusion that the primary element must be the station, not the shot.
I would add that equally shots and stations are primary data elements. Even surveys that
don't record stations must do so at junctions to connect the network. From a database
application point of view, shots between the same stations would have records with a
different ID. As Martin Heller recently described, I also have written a generic data
export for the purpose of importing into database programs. In this routine, I supply both
the stations and shots with a unique ID.
> The down side of this is that the CaveXML file contains elements that
> don't come directly from the survey book. An editor, when a shot is
> added, needs to check if the stations already exist. If so it uses the
> old id for the station, otherwise it needs to generate a new station
> element.
I don't think we want to recommend editing CaveXML with a generic text editor. What does
the XML rule say about newline characters? DOS, UNIX or MAC world? Probably says maintain
whatever character was used by the file, but many text editors were never intended to be
cross platform. I would say that CaveXML can be patched with a text editor, but do not try
and write native XML off the top of your head. It is function of specific XML editors to
free the user from bookkeeping tasks such as station or shot ID.
> I don't see a real need for the station id's to follow any particular
> pattern, sequential numbers, globally unique identifiers etc., but of
> course that is permitted, or they can be added as another set of names.
> All that is *needed* is that ids be unique within one file. Stations in
> other files could be handled by a station element that contains a
> reference to the other file; within this file it would be referred to by
> its local id.
I like the idea of unique IDs within a file, for both shots and stations. Can we convince
those cave data format in which names are context based (survex) users to adopt this idea?
Garry Petrie
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Apr 02 2001 - 18:00:00 CEST