dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Knut, the nub of your argument seems to be to to implement shapefile
import as an augmentation to dhis - something which I also saw Calle
and others suggest in earlier thread.

Its not necessarily a bad idea, but my point is that I don't think
this would be easy to do as an "app". I might of course be wrong about
this.  But I can't see the processing of shapefiles (which are
misleadingly called files) being easily done in javascript in the
browser.  So I think you are going to have some additional java code
in the core - not necessarily a lot, but some.

Someone like Jan might know better.

Regarding a high level architecture view, I suppose the tension here
is between simple tools which do what they do well but are not always
easy to put together when you don't know what you are doing (the unix
philosophy, and ogr approach) vs limitless growth to the web
application and pumping-up-the-jam :-)  There are forces which drive
both rationales.

On 31 March 2015 at 12:02, 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
>>> >>> >
>>> >>> >
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>>> >>>
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>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> 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