1

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

Is it possible for users to add new Taxonomic Lists to Recorder 6? I would like to add the list for our local BAP but could not find any info on doing so in the Help files

Craig Slawson
Staffordshire Ecological Record

Craig Slawson
Staffordshire Ecological Record

2

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

I am not entirely sure whether it is possible to add your own list however what might work better is adding your own designation. This could be your local BAP designation with species associated using a rucksack. There is a technical tutorial which guides a user through the process of adding your own designation.This tutorial is not quite ready to disseminate right now but hopefully will be available very soon from the new website. I will post a message in the announcements section when the new website is up and running.

Lynn

3 (edited by TonyP 30-10-2009 12:11:55)

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

Is there any progress on this yet. I was hoping to add local species designations. I was told I could and thought I'd seen discussion of this but this thread has not been updated.

On a Friday when one wants to do what was a simple thing and ESSENTIAL thing in R3 it is disturbing that after 9 years this is still a discussion. Should I go back to R3?

Perhaps the answer is in one of the other myriad threads picked up on my search. Ho hum

I see a year ago people were creating a dictionary to do this, another perversion of a status becoming a dictionary. My problem would then be which dictionary should I get the name from to use in my new dictionary and how many days will it take to write the query to extract the records with my new status sorry dictionary reference. Yes I see the note on rucksack use but again which dictionary should I use to populate the rucksack and why can I not just import the 4000 names I need to add? It's going to take an age to do this and again in R3 I'd be finished by now.

Progress I guess!

It gets even better of course I start my first rucksack put one species in and save: Exception occurred in application Recorder 6 ......

If only there was help on this and an explanation of how to import a list for this purpose.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre

4

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

There's no need to create a dictionary in order to store local status; it's actually very easy to create and add a custom status to taxa within Recorder. I've done a quick screencast to demonstrate:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/256478/screencasts/Recorder_Designations_Setup.swf

You can create a rucksack of species and bulk assign them with the new designation using a batch update (Tools > Run Batch Updates > Designations > Des2). If you don't like working with Rucksacks, then you can maintain a list of TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEYS in a CSV and use that with a batch update (Des3).

If you want to report on your new custom designation within Recorder, you need to add it to your own Designation Set. This is also easy to do:

1. Select Reports > Run > System reports > Information > SY05
2. Export the resulting list to Excel
3. Open it in Excel and remove any items you DON'T want in your Designation Set
4. Save as a CSV
5. In Recorder, select Tools > Run Batch Updates > Designations > Des1

The Des1 report will walk you through the rest.

Let me know if you have any questions at all about any of these processes. In 6.14, designations reporting finally became practical and useful and I'd hate to see anyone become snagged up and frustrated when in actual fact, we've got something really good here now. So yes, give me a shout if you need any further assistance.

Charles

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

5

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

Thanks Charles.

I guess as I have 6.13 installed I don't have Des1, Des2 or Des3. I assume they come with 6.14.

The rucksack idea is fine it's just when I find I can't seem to import into a rucksack and then find I have to look up each species I want to add just so I can enter them.

[Also I still live with the concern that the dictionary that I use may affect what species is actually refereed to. I still can't get over the fact that an otter is still an otter whatever dictionary it smells of except in Recorder.:)]

I realise I'm on a learning curve here but now I must find TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEYS for all species to match against my species lists. I'd guess there is an xml report somewhere to do this but am probably wrong.

Now to find my notes on installing my final data and performing the upgrade. One can't forget the days when one put in a floppy and typed upgrade.

Thanks again Charles back on with the mission.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre

6

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

Hi Tony,

That one's easy. The table INDEX_TAXON_NAME is compiled when you update the taxon name index from the tools menu. As far as I can tell this cuts through all the crap and contains fields like ACTUAL NAME, PREFERRED NAME, TAXON LIST ITEM KEY and even RECOMMENDED TAXON LIST ITEM KEY.

So just start with your list of names, run a query using this table, copy the resulting list into an empty rucksack file, then follow the instructions, job done.

Cheers mate

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

7

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

Tony,

Much of the stuff I mention in my previous post won't apply if you're still on 6.13. The designations 'framework', for want of a better term, within Recorder was significantly updated in 6.14.

Regarding the selection of taxa to add to a rucksack, always try to use the 'preferred' taxon. This is easy to do using the Taxon Dictionary Browser: hit Ctrl-T then Ctrl-F, then select Preferred Checklists from the drop-down (rather un-intuitively, you have to scroll *up* the list to find this item). Search for the taxon you're after and the relevant checklist will be opened at the relevant place. It's often a good idea to stick a wildcard (*) in front of the search term because so many species have had "European" or "Eurasian" stuck in front of the common name.

Another tool you can use, which I created a while ago before the above existed, is the XML Report found by right-clicking on a species > Quick Report > Species Reports > SxBRC Find Preferred Taxon Name & Key. You can click on the result this finds to be taken to the preferred taxon.

Once you've found your desired taxon, click the 'show metadata' icon (it's a blue i on the toolbar) and that should tell you the TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY.

Rob is spot on with his advice re. INDEX_TAXON_NAME. The trick to using it for finding the preferred details of a taxon is to join it onto itself. Here's an example:

use nbndata
go

select
    itn.taxon_list_item_key
    ,itn.actual_name as [Name]
    ,itn_pref.actual_name as [Preferred Name]
    ,itn_pref.common_name as [Preferred Common Name]
    ,itn_pref.recommended_taxon_list_item_key
from
    index_taxon_name as itn
inner join
    index_taxon_name as itn_pref on
    itn.recommended_taxon_list_item_key = itn_pref.taxon_list_item_key
where
    itn.actual_name like '%otter'

Result:

taxon_list_item_key       Name            Preferred Name    Preferred Common Name   recommended_taxon_list_item_key
NHMSYS0000332539          European Otter  Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
NHMSYS0001683565          European Otter  Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
NBNSYS0200005683          Otter           Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
NBNSYS0000155144          Otter           Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
NBNSYS0000173582          Otter           Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
NBNSYS0000127259          Otter           Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
NHMSYS0001771228          Otter           Lutra lutra       European Otter          NHMSYS0000332594
Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

8

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

As luck would have it, I've just had to create a rucksack based on a list of species someone provided to us in a spreadsheet. Thought it might be helpful if I outlined the steps I took.

1. In the spreadsheet, the list of species is contained in column A, so I write the following formula in column B:

="'"&A2&"',"

This wraps the species name in single quotes and adds a comma onto the end.

2. Copy this formula down the column to cover all species names

3. Copy the result

4. Create an SQL query like this, using the list you just copied (don't forget to remove the last comma from the last species):

select distinct
    itn.recommended_taxon_list_item_key
from
    index_taxon_name itn
where
    itn.actual_name in ('Hepialus hecta',
'Hepialus fusconebulosa',
'Phragmataecia castaneae',
'Cossus cossus',
'Adscita statices',
'Adscita geryon',
'Jordanita globulariae',
'Zygaena trifolii',
'Zygaena trifolii form decreta',
'Zygaena trifolii form palustrella',
'Zygaena filipendulae x lonicerae')

5. With the resulting list of recommended_taxon_list_item_keys, paste them into a rucksack between the <TAXON></TAXON> tags.

You should now have a rucksack populated with your required species. Note, if the name in the species list you're using doesn't match one of those in Recorder, you're not going to get a result back, so you need to check to make sure the number of recommended_taxon_list_item_keys you're getting back matches the number of species you're putting in.

I've uploaded a zip file containing the files I used/generated in this process:

http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploads.php?file=making_a_rucksack.zip

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

9

Re: Adding New Taxonomic Lists

charlesroper wrote:

You can create a rucksack of species and bulk assign them with the new designation using a batch update (Tools > Run Batch Updates > Designations > Des2). If you don't like working with Rucksacks, then you can maintain a list of TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEYS in a CSV and use that with a batch update (Des3).

If you want to report on your new custom designation within Recorder, you need to add it to your own Designation Set. This is also easy to do:

1. Select Reports > Run > System reports > Information > SY05
2. Export the resulting list to Excel
3. Open it in Excel and remove any items you DON'T want in your Designation Set
4. Save as a CSV
5. In Recorder, select Tools > Run Batch Updates > Designations > Des1

The Des1 report will walk you through the rest.

Let me know if you have any questions at all about any of these processes. In 6.14, designations reporting finally became practical and useful and I'd hate to see anyone become snagged up and frustrated when in actual fact, we've got something really good here now. So yes, give me a shout if you need any further assistance.

Charles

When I carry out the instruction for setting up designations set using Des1 & come to apply it I get a warning "The batch update is about to change records. Do you want to proceed".
Is this correct? is the designation applied to individual records or to the taxon? or is the record change referring to change in the designations set table?
thanks