dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 8:19 AM, <johansa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > I will throw my two (probably worthless) cents in here. [?]
> >
> > For the use case you describe Knut (surveys), it is incumbent upon the
> > user
> > to create a unique AND short name, usually to pull into something like
> > SAS,
> > SPSS, R or other statistical package (or possibly GIS) that can only deal
> > short names. Most survey packages (CSPRO, LimeSurvey, etc) require some
> > sort
> > of unique and short name as a code for each question. So if the survey
> has
> > been properly implemented from the get-go, there should not be an issue
> > here. I would say that this import process should simply be *well
> > documented
> > *, and that the current data model should not be messed with. It works
> > well
> > for things like exporting to DBF (compatible with GIS) and releasing this
> > restriction could really create a lot of problems, potentially also with
> > importing data from DHIS 1.4 (although I have no idea what the actual
> > maximum length there is, but I assume it is 25 as well).
>
> Acutally, I thought it was only 20 in DHIS 1.4? What happens at import
> then? btw, the maximum length is very useful, not only for the technical
> reasons already mentioned, but also for making nice reports (without just
> cutting away the often important last part of a DE name). That's the main
> reason from a users perspective
>

Yes, we will keep things as they are, but will have to implement and
document a procedure for importing from Excel: People need guidelines and
 hopefully some automated assistance when importing preexisting data and
metadata. We would really appreciate help on the documentation.

Knut



>
>
> > I say leave it as is. If people need this functionality, let them change
> > the
> > DB at their own peril.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jason
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 8:26 PM, Bob Jolliffe
> >> <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> >>
> >>> 2009/4/17 Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>> > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx
> >
> >>> wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >>  We have
> >>> >> 'description' which holds an arbitrary amount of text.  So I would
> >>> opt
> >>> >> to import the full question in here and do some sort of fat
> >>> truncation
> >>> >> trick for the short names which are too long. How many of them go
> >>> >>
> >>> >> over the limit?
> >>> >
> >>> > 2341
> >>>
> >>> Thats a lot more than you want to do by hand!  Dunno.  Will think some
> >>> more.
> >>>
> >>
> >> For now, I will make do with truncated names + id. We just have to add
> >> the
> >> full names to the report tables (which currently rely only on short
> >> names -
> >> easy enough to do).
> >>
> >> But it is an interesting question whether it is possible to generate
> >> meaningful names (both full and short) from long survey questions (a
> >> handful
> >> are over 150 characters), whereas the full question can go into the
> >> description field or similar.
> >>
> >> Knut
> >>
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>
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-- 
Cheers,
Knut Staring