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Topic: Increase length of MEASUREMENT_TYPE description

Can the length of the description field in the MEASUREMENT_TYPE table be increased? VARCHAR(50) is too short to write a useful description. TEXT seems overkill, but is in-line with other descriptions.

Limiting the ui text box to the same length would also be helpful so as not to truncate text entered (which is how I found out about the low length!).

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

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Re: Increase length of MEASUREMENT_TYPE description

I suggest it is changed to 200. Descriptions on the term list are generally TEXT  or set at 200. At the moment the field truncates without warning to the length in the table. Validation on this will be a bit tricky and I wonder if it is necessary if the field length is increased.

Mike Weideli

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Re: Increase length of MEASUREMENT_TYPE description

Thanks Mike. Is it not possible to just limit the number of characters that can be entered into the text box (à la survey name)? Or can that only be done with one line inputs?

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

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Re: Increase length of MEASUREMENT_TYPE description

Hi

The  same description box is used by all the Term list inputs. The description box would need to be told  the length applicable to each Term list. This means either holding the lengths in the code, which could result in maintenance issues or holding them in a table. I suspect the way it was done originally was to avoid this complication.

Changing the length can be done in a few minutes. Adding the validation is more like a day with testing.

Mike Weideli

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Re: Increase length of MEASUREMENT_TYPE description

Ah, I see! I can live without validation (and I suspect it's not used a great deal by others?).

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership