FAQ - Report Output

Q.  Reporting and Exporting  Using the taxonomic Hierarchy

A. Each dictionary list in Recorder 6 uses a different taxonomic structure, which depends on the thinking at the time the list was produced.  Prior to the introduction of the Organism table in Version 6.18 expansion of the taxonomic hierarchy was done using consolidated information from all  lists.  Results could never be trusted.  The introduction of the Organism table meant that a consistent taxonomic hierarchy could be applied to all taxa irrespective of their dictionary list.  However, while some lists did contain intermediate taxonomic levels the Organism table is only complete for Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order and  Family. This means that expanding down the hierarchy from other intermediate levels does not work (eg. sub-order). In addition to this some higher level taxa, while present in Recorder 6 are considered redundant (no longer considered valid) using these is not supported.         

Version 6.25  provides  information on which levels can be used for expanding.

Ideally some of the intermediate levels are needed in the Organism table, and this is  beginning to happen, with the new Lepidoptera list (Upgrade 0000038to3A) reflecting a number of intermediate taxonomic level

Q. Reports as an ESRI Shape File

A. The option exist to export a report as an ESRI shape file, together with the attributes. This option is only available if Sample Lat and Sample Long are included in the output. This applies both with the Report Wizard and XML reports.  he export will not work if any of the fields are of type char (or nvarchar). This means that with the Report Wizard you can not use any of the metadata fields (eg. Sample key).  With XML reports Cast should be used to convert  Char fields to varchar (eg. Cast(Sample_Key  as varchar)) This may also be necessary if a UDF is used which does not return a varchar. Including fields of an invalid data type as attributes file will prevent the file from loading into R6 or into  other applications.

The sample date field generated by the Report Wizard is a integer field  (vague_date_start). An additional field could be added to the report output to use the UDF to get the R6 vague date. However, this would need to be requested by a user.  For XML reports use the UDF Cast([dbo].[LCReturnVagueDateShort](), as varchar) to obtain the Recorder 6 vague date.