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Topic: Problem maintaining sites across copies of Recorder

I have found an annoying problem when dealing with sites across multiple copies of Recorder.

The scenario is as follows:
1) sites imported from 2 copies of Recorder
2) duplicates found and combined, this results in a site with 2 site names both identical (or very similar)
3) neither can be deleted because they are 'owned' by the supplying copies of Recorder
4) sending site to one of the other copies, one site name can be deleted by that copy of Recorder
5) re-importing the site with 'accept all imported' does not delete the extra name because it does not exist in the import, so is not changed in the receiving copy

This also happens with the list of valid grid references, with the added problem if two entries are the same the Site entry is totally uneditable because on saving it states there are duplicates in the grid refs but they cannot be deleted so the record cannot be saved.

It will potentially happen with any combines where multiple values are combined from the two original records when creating the combined entry. I think there needs to be an additional option to allow deletion of foreign keys. I'm not sure why Recorder does not allow the deletion of items within a record with foreign keys, but will allow deletion of the whole record!

We also suffer from a problem with valid grid references created during the Rec3 to Rec6 transfer - if 10m precise grid refs are included in the list, they have no entry in the precision, and unless these entries are deleted the site cannot be saved. This is a separate issue which needs to be resolved if any other Rec3-Rec6 transfers are to be done

Craig

Craig Slawson
Staffordshire Ecological Record