dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Knut,

To me it makes little sense to be quite honest. QGIS and other tools can do
all of this, remarkably well. Yes, it is maybe not the smoothest workflow,
but on the other hand, does it really make sense to invest time and money
into developing a custom tool for transformation, manipulation and export
of geographical data?

What about another example... a tool to import Excel sheets, instead of
CSV. Metadata import via CSV is supported, but why should we not direct
import of Excel files? I am sure an app could be developed for this, but
since Excel can do this so trivially, it would seem to really make little
sense to do so.

This is my feeling as well with the geographical data. There are so many
other things which we do not cover, such as the linkage between an existing
hierarchy and a shape file, resolution of broken topology, cleansing of
donuts holes which often result from generalization, etc. Will these be
covered as well? Also, in my experience, we do always  derive the hierarchy
itself from the shape file (although in certain cases this may happen). How
would the proposed tool address all of these use cases, and would it not be
better to create detailed guidance on how to do these sorts of tasks with
more general tools instead? After all, there are only so many countries.

I do not want to put a damper on the development of this app, as I think it
could be useful to some, but feel it will be a lot of trouble to keep it up
and maintained as the platform itself changes.

My two cents.

Best regards,
Jason


On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 1:02 PM, Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From an architectural view of DHIS2 as a platform, it is quite interesting
> to see suggestions coming up about third party solutions such as QGIS when
> there is already an attempt well underway to build on our own app framework
> to enable this functionality within DHIS2. Especially when this goes to the
> heart of configuring the platform, namely bootstrapping the OU hierarchy,
> which forms the backbone of an implementation.
>
> There are several pieces to the puzzle: Reprojection,
> Simplification/Generalisation, Linking to existing OU hierarchy. To me it
> seems natural to want to pull this away from a series of command line steps
> and external tools, but it is interesting to hear arguments in other
> directions, also for Sushil's thesis. Feedback from the community is
> important. Of course, we used to have such an external module with the
> DataMart, but that was on the output side (not configuration)
>
> Knut
>
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> My point is that mapshaper already reads the shapefile, and Sushil's app
>> built around it already exists.
>>
>> You are right that some shapefiles are really heavy (thus the need for
>> mapshaper).
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> That is a handy enough library for dealing with projection all right.
>>> But doesn't really help in reading the shapefile, which *might* be a
>>> bit of a heavy lift for an app dealing with dbf and shp files.  I'm
>>> not convinced this would be a really good use of developer time.
>>>
>>> QGis already does all the grunt work of reading in the shapefile and
>>> dealing with the various oddnesses.  Getting it to dump its output as
>>> dhis orgunits seems like a relatively straightforward proposition.
>>> But you can't assume everyone would want to use qgis.
>>>
>>> Maybe another approach would be to create a simple less geeky ui on
>>> top of ogr2ogr.  dunno really.  I'm not seeing a silver bullet here.
>>>
>>> On 31 March 2015 at 10:12, Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> > Much better use of developer time would be to include
>>> http://proj4js.org/ in
>>> > Sushil's app, so that everything needed comes in one sweet package.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> shp2gml is taken care of by ogr2ogr, as described in our manual.
>>> >>
>>> >> Yes, someone could write a QGis plugin, but why should they, since we
>>> are
>>> >> now working on a web app to do this. Granted, it does not (yet)
>>> include
>>> >> reprojection, but it does include the other crucial step of
>>> generalisation
>>> >> using http://www.mapshaper.org/.
>>> >>
>>> >> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Of course shp2gml tools already exist - they could be described as a
>>> >>> bit geeky using the command line.  Though there is need for some of
>>> >>> those geeky options for dealing with projection systems and the like.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> I think someone with some python know how could write a neat little
>>> >>> QGis plugin to export to dhis2 format which *might* make it easier
>>> for
>>> >>> users.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> On 30 March 2015 at 18:59, Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> >>> wrote:
>>> >>> > Shape file import sounds like an ideal task for an external
>>> developer,
>>> >>> > as it
>>> >>> > could transform the shapefile content and pipe it into the GML
>>> importer
>>> >>> > and
>>> >>> > hence does not require lots of DHIS 2 knowledge.
>>> >>> >
>>> >>> > Lars
>>> >>> >
>>> >>> >
>>> >>> > _______________________________________________
>>> >>> > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>> >>> > Post to     : dhis2-devs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> >>> > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
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>>> >>> >
>>> >>>
>>> >>> _______________________________________________
>>> >>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>> >>> Post to     : dhis2-devs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> >>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>> >>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> Knut Staring
>>> >> Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo
>>> >> Norway: +4791880522
>>> >> Skype: knutstar
>>> >> http://dhis2.org
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Knut Staring
>>> > Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo
>>> > Norway: +4791880522
>>> > Skype: knutstar
>>> > http://dhis2.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Knut Staring
>> Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo
>> Norway: +4791880522
>> Skype: knutstar
>> http://dhis2.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Knut Staring
> Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo
> Norway: +4791880522
> Skype: knutstar
> http://dhis2.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
> Post to     : dhis2-devs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>
>


-- 
Jason P. Pickering
email: jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx
tel:+46764147049