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Datafable / dolichopodidae-portugal-data-publication

Data publication and paper for the Dolichopodidae from Portugal
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Standardize source coordinates #2

Open peterdesmet opened 9 years ago

peterdesmet commented 9 years ago

Source coordinates are currently written as 8°53'07.0"W. Although it is convenient that this information is in one field, it is 1) hard to validate and 2) somewhat complex to convert to decimal coordinates (-8.88527777777778), which we will use in the published dataset.

We can:

  1. Keep the single field, but then some coordinates will have to be corrected so they have the exact same format + write a SQL formula to parse them.
  2. Split the coordinates in 3 (or 4) fields: (negative) degrees, minutes, seconds (and a hemisphere field: W). It's easy to parse, but it adds 6 to 8 fields in total.
  3. Store all coordinates as decimal degrees in the database, in which case we lose an indication of the precision (e.g. it was to the tenth second). Storing decimal coordinates with 7 decimals is precise to the centimeter, so more than enough.

@marcpollet, what do you prefer?

marcpollet commented 9 years ago

Dear Peter,

I prefer to retain the current coordinates but will provide you with decimal coordinates, generated in a view or from stored values in my data base. In this way, I keep the more accurate format, and have the useful format available at any time. Ok with that?

Cheers, Marc

peterdesmet commented 9 years ago

So that would be option 1?