[Taxacom] Announcing Specify 7 for the Web

[Mike Sadka]

Hi All

Atomic date fields also allow users to store partial dates, which are common in Museum collections.

So they are unquestionably the most accurate and future-proof way of storing collections data, and guarantee that any desired presentation is possible.

Approaches based on notes or comments will inevitably lead to inconsistent data storage, and are likely to preclude some records from consideration (eg - with atomic fields one can return records by year or month if that is the only known datum, but with true date fields one cannot store and retrieve a lone year or month).

Yes, I'm a database person!

Cheerio, Mike



-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Mesibov
Sent: 26 May 2014 22:44
To: Fred Schueler
Cc: TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Announcing Specify 7 for the Web

Hi, Fred.

I've seen several different methods for dealing with date uncertainty, in museum databases. One is to have single, separate fields for 'start' and 'finish' dates. The most popular method in Australia is to fix one date in a date field, then expand on this in a 'notes' field. For example, a pitfall trapping that ran from 15 January 2014 to 15 March 2014 might have *either* date in the date field (museum preferences vary), then 'pitfall trapping 15 January - 15 March 2014' in a 'notes' field.

The issue of 3 fields vs 1 field for dates seems to be connected with who designed the data structure. A database person might prefer atomising a date into year, month and day, because *storing* a date is different from *displaying* or *reporting* a date. You can easily manipulate atomised data, but parsing strung-together data can be a pain. Museum data structures have often been designed by curators, who typically see a 'date' as a single string, to be entered, stored, displayed and reported as a single string.
--
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania Home contact:
PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195

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