I need to change the SQL and Python scripts to drop the vehicle_direction and vehicle_speed columns. Reasoning provided below.
Currently, vehicle_location includes two numeric columns, vehicle_direction and vehicle_speed, that I can't foresee using in any potential applications of interest to me.
Direction seems primarily useful for visualization, e.g. if using real-time NextBus data to power a mobile app that includes a map with vehicle locations. For analysis, though, I can't envision using it. Moreover, the information isn't always good. For example, LA Metro only uses cardinal directions: 0, 90, 180, and 270.
Speed, on the other hand, is useful in the abstract. But rather than "point in time" speed, what will actually be useful to me is average speed over some time interval (e.g. between two location updates, or between two stops). Thus, I won't be using the information from NextBus.
Since I'm currently butting up against the AWS Free Tier limits on AWS, storage space is especially important. So, I should be cutting out unnecessary information where possible, especially in the vehicle_location table - which takes up 90-95% of total storage space. Thus, I should drop vehicle direction and speed, as reported by NextBus, from this tool.
I need to change the SQL and Python scripts to drop the
vehicle_directionandvehicle_speedcolumns. Reasoning provided below.Currently,
vehicle_locationincludes two numeric columns,vehicle_directionandvehicle_speed, that I can't foresee using in any potential applications of interest to me.Direction seems primarily useful for visualization, e.g. if using real-time NextBus data to power a mobile app that includes a map with vehicle locations. For analysis, though, I can't envision using it. Moreover, the information isn't always good. For example, LA Metro only uses cardinal directions: 0, 90, 180, and 270.
Speed, on the other hand, is useful in the abstract. But rather than "point in time" speed, what will actually be useful to me is average speed over some time interval (e.g. between two location updates, or between two stops). Thus, I won't be using the information from NextBus.
Since I'm currently butting up against the AWS Free Tier limits on AWS, storage space is especially important. So, I should be cutting out unnecessary information where possible, especially in the
vehicle_locationtable - which takes up 90-95% of total storage space. Thus, I should drop vehicle direction and speed, as reported by NextBus, from this tool.