1 Topic by James Dargie

  • James Dargie
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  • Registered: 10-02-2010
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Topic: Exporting to the NBN Gateway from MR

Has anyone else had an issue when using the "May 2011 v 1-5-11 - Marine Recorder to gateway exporter"?

Available at:

http://esdm.co.uk/MarineRecorder/index.html

I get an error message (I would attach screen dump but it won't let me add a PDF or a DOC......):

Run-time error 13 - type mismatch

& it then jumps to the visual basic module OtherFunctions, highlighting a line of code:

"numericAbundance = numericAbundance + 1 + rs!Data"

If I try it on a single survey it runs OK, but I have 152 surveys I need to output.

What frustrates me is that when I ran this tool in June 2012 it worked. I suspect given the message & visual basic script that either the code is trying to place data of the wrong type into a field, or there is an issue with data. I've looked at some of our abundance values and think there are some anomalies but when I exclude the surveys concerned the thing still falls over.

Just curious to know if anyone else is using the exporter & having similar issues?

Thanks

2 Reply by Lynn Heeley

  • Lynn Heeley
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  • Registered: 03-07-2008
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Re: Exporting to the NBN Gateway from MR

Hi James,

i have not heard of this issue in particular, i would suggest it is a data issue as you suspect.
Can you look through the abundances in the mdb behind (rather than clicking through all the screens on the interface) to try and get to the bottom of it? perhaps you have a numeric abundance (such as count) under a qualifier code of SACFORN or something which is expected as text.....not possible through the interface but imports or straight into the database for some reason.

we are about to update the Gateway exporter so if this is a bug rather than a data issue let me know.

Best Wishes,
Lynn

3 Reply by James Dargie (edited by James Dargie 16-04-2013 16:23:54)

  • James Dargie
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Re: Exporting to the NBN Gateway from MR

Well there are indeed some anomalies in the abundance data, but why the tool ran okay back in June 2012 is therefore beyond me (you know it ran as we got the data to the Gateway) as the anolmalies are in no way restricted to newly supplied data!

We have:

- a single Taxon occurrence with a Count value " " (space) as opposed to a numeric value
- a series of Taxon occurrences with Count vales "0", suspect these are permissable
- a series of Taxon Occurrences with decimal Count values "0.1" or "0.5" [where Number per square metre values have been enteredinto the count field - naughty] would be good to know if these are acceptable from a technical perspective or whether only integers are permissable?
- a series (1395 in total) of Taxon occurrences with Abundance (SACFOR) records with value "P", I'm assuming this is unacceptable?

Everything else looks right; basically confirms that it is possible whether through the interface or spreadsheet import to enter inappropriate abundance measurments for the abundance scale in use, some tighter controls on the user interface & spreadsheet import are clearly needed.

Whether this is the cause of the export failing remains to be seen but it does give me somewhere to focus efforts.

4 Reply by James Dargie

  • James Dargie
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Re: Exporting to the NBN Gateway from MR

While we clearly have a number of issues with entered abundance values the one that was causing the export to fail was:

- a single Taxon occurrence with a Count value " " (space) as opposed to a numeric value.

Solved by examining the report which confirmed that that taxon did not occur at that sample, and deleting it from the replicate list solved the problem. I don't seem to be able to save a record with just a space through the user interface which suggests it was introduced through the spreadsheet import mechanism but I don't have time to test the import.

The other issues of SACFORN abundance with value "P" and Num per square metre values as Count data will have to be addressed at some future juncture. To note that it does not seem possible to enter the value "P" through the user interface against a SACFORN record, so again I'm making an assumption that our 1395 records of these arrived through spreadsheet imports.