Thank you, Alexei, I have done! ----- Original Message ----- From: Alexei Peters To: Adam Cox Cc: Arches Project Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 10:47 PM Subject: Re: [Arches] Re: Creating .Arches files
Hi Lucy, Make sure to name your file with a lowercase extension ".arches" instead of ".Arches" otherwise the file won't load. Cheers, Alexei Director of Web Development - Farallon Geographics, Inc. - 971.227.3173 On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 9:42 AM, Adam Cox <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Lucy, personally I'd recommend modifying (a copy of!) the excel file, because then you can continually recreate the .arches file from it--I've always found it beneficial to spend the most time on replicable steps rather than one time (copy/paste) operations. Here's something that could help the process, and I'll use the Name, Name Type as an example: If you have a column of names, and you know that they are all primary names, you can avoid creating a new column where every value is "NAME_TYPE:1" by just hard-coding that term into a statement in the query. So, your new statement would not reference a column name, but would just have "NAME_TYPE:1" written into it. In the example I made, the geometry column shows an example of combining strings, 'POINT (', with column names, lat. So that may be helpful for reference. A couple of other points related to this: If you have begun to use open office, it would be really great to see if this same SQL stuff can be used there. Just a word of warning, even though it's all SQL, the syntax (double vs. single quotes, the use of AS) may differ between Excel and Open Office. Also, it occurs to me that once you have created a spreadsheet that is formatted like a .arches file, you could probably do some pretty nimble things with it by using the sorting and filtering capabilities that Excel has and I'm sure open office has. A .arches file is just a bunch of rows with two levels of sorting: first by RESOURCEID and second by GROUPID. To add a line to a specific resource, you could just filter the rows based on a RESOURCEID, add your new row or two, and then remove the filter, re-sort, and you will have properly "inserted" a row. Finally, I just downloaded Open Office, and it looks like you can write Python or Javascript macros. This is pretty huge (if you're into that sort of thing) and a simple python or js macro could be used in place of the SQL query I made. Sharing open office macros is probably really easy, so this would be a great way to collaborate. Good luck! On Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 6:19:35 AM UTC-6, Lucy FJ wrote: Hi Adam, I have now thoroughly read the documentation on .Arches file and have played around with the Microsoft query and have a much better idea of what I need to do, so there is no need to answer some of the questions I asked below! It seems that you either need to do a lot of manipulation of the excel file or a lot of copy and pasting in the .Arches file which will then be enormous even for our modest database! Lucy On Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 11:01:23 AM UTC+2, Lucy FJ wrote: Hi Adam, Finally I am back testing out creating an .Arches file (but I am not able to load them yet and see the results) and I do have further questions about adding alternative names and several resource classifications. Just to be clear that I understood you correctly, the group ID keeps records that are related within a heritage resource together, and the resource ID ensures that all data for a particular resource is kept together? Therefore, each alternative name/nametype would have a separate Group ID from the preferred name/nametype, but the same Resource ID? Secondly, I am not very familiar with Microsoft query, but it seems that the original Excel file for creating the query from, can only have one 'row' per record or archaeological site in our case. So as you suggested, we would need to put in a new column for each alternative name we have and for each site type classification and of course modify the query to add more statements for the extra names etc. I am looking for a method of reading the Excel file in the way we have set up with all the alternative name being in one column, as it would be more efficient for us - sometimes we have 10 alternative names but I don't think Microsoft Query can handle this. I don't know if you have any further thoughts on this or know how others have handles this. Thank you very much for your help, which is always appreciated! Lucy On Monday, January 18, 2016 at 7:27:24 PM UTC+2, Adam Cox wrote: Hi Lucy, I'm happy to hear the documentation was helpful. To add more attributes to your .arches file, you'll just need to add more statements to the SQL query. First, because the SQL window is pretty cramped in Excel, I'd recommend pasting your query into Notepad ++ so it's easier to work with. If you look at the two statements that define Name and Name_Type, you'll see that they both reference "group1". What you want to do is make more groups, so I'd recommend copying and pasting the Name_Type statement from the existing query (because it is the most standard) and pasting it below, as many times as you need--one time per new attribute that you need to add. Then just make sure to set the group value appropriately: if you have an alternate name, you'll have to make a new column for that name, and make a column with the correct conceptid (or hard-code the conceptid into the new statement), and then put "group3" into each statement. Or, if you just have a single column for a standalone attribute like "Site Type", make sure it has its own unique group ID. I hope that makes sense. I have to run now, but if you have more questions don't hesitate to ask them! Adam On Sunday, January 17, 2016 at 12:17:31 PM UTC-6, Lucinda Fletcher-Jones wrote: Hi all, I have worked through the example in Adam Cox's excellent guide to creating a .Arches file from a Microsoft Excel file which is where we have all our archaeological site data at present, and it worked very well. Now I have a question. Our data, as everyone else's is a little more complicated than the example. How do you deal with a site that has more than one name and more than one classification etc? for example: Dabanarti with three names and three site types. Thank you very much, Lucy -- -- To post, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected]. 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