Trevor James has just posted a message onto our mailing list (archive of the message available here) which reminded me of a feature we've often needed. Essentially, we need to be able to mark records, preferably in batches (entire survey's for instance), as 'not for dissemination'. This flag would simply prevent records from being exported. It would be a bit like the confidential flag, but not as strong.

If you read Trevor's message, you'll see a condition of receiving harlequin ladybird data from the survey would be that the data should not be disseminated further. Now, unless we mark all of the records as confidential (which is akin to a sledgehammer and nut scenario) when and if we were to import them into our database, we have no easy way of stopping the records getting exported again. We have several other datasets that are strictly 'not for dissemination', but yet the records aren't confidential, and so we have to think very carefully about incorporating them into Recorder.

Do others have 'not for dissemination' datasets that would benefit from such a feature?

Charles