Curious if any users have experience with the Collecting Trip table, and specifically the fields Vessel and Cruise. I have a large batch of incoming records that I need to migrate, but unfortunately, these fields are not mappable through the Workbench. I am toying with the idea of using fields within the CE table instead (either available text fields or the CE Remarks field). Anyone have experience with the CT table/fields or have recommendations for workarounds and efficient data migration? Using Specify6.
@freyma The collecting trip table is available in the Workbench in Specify 7. I use the collecting trip table for fish specimens collected on cruises and am able to import vessel, cruise and haul information into this table just fine. Not sure why you are not seeing it
Hi Andy, thank you for responding and sharing the screen shots of how this would work in Specify 7. Unfortunately, I am still in Specify 6 and my understanding is that Vessel and Cruise are not mappable. A few years ago, when I migrated my database in Sp6, these fields were mappable (at least that is my recollection); but for some reason, neither Vessel nor Cruise now appear in the workbench. If this is the case, then perhaps I need to find a workaround OR migrate to Sp7.
@freyma Melissa, I can see collecting trip in the workbench:
It may be that the field are either hidden in the schema or need to be added to the workbench XML files in order to be visible. There are two files associated with the workbench in your config directory called specify_wokbench_datamodel.xml and specify_workbench_upload_def.xml that would need to be modified to include those fields. Here is what that table looks like in my files:
Hi Andy, the default specify_workbench_datamodel.xml is the same that you show, but neither of the codes include vessel or cruise. Is there a reason why the default file doesn’t include these fields?
Prior to reaching out to this forum, I tried to add both fields to the workbench xml files, but have not been able to get either field to show up in the workbench. Perhaps I have the code wrong – here is what I have tried:
(see below post)
The other issue might be that the code is correct but that I haven’t imported the schema properly.
Thank you!
Melissa
Looks right. not sure why it is not showing up. Will have to run it by the other Specify folks to see if anyone has any ideas.
Probably because they are not very frequently used
Are you sure that text1 and text2 are vessel and cruise in your schema?
No, both are their own field: ‘Cruise’ and ‘Vessel’, as per the Schema Configuration (and a published schema from 2020). I use Text 1 for ‘Haul/Tow’.
Hi Andrew, any chance that you were able to speak with Specify folks to see if they had any additional insight? Thank you!
Hi @freyma,
I’ve been out of the country until today so I apologize that I was unable to get back to you sooner!
In @AndyBentley’s database, Vessel and Cruise are mapped to text1 and text2 respectively, so no further modification to the specify_workbench_datamodel.xml was necessary. I’m not sure why that is, but it could be due to the larger character limit, or the data placement decision may have predated the introduction of those fields.
I was able to add the vessel and cruise fields to the Specify 6 WorkBench by adding the following 2 lines to the specify_workbench_upload_def.xml file under the <!-- collectingtrip --> heading:
<field table="CollectingTrip" name="vessel" actualname="Vessel"/>
<field table="CollectingTrip" name="cruise" actualname="Cruise"/>
specify_workbench_upload_def.xml (144.0 KB)
specify_workbench_datamodel.xml (143.3 KB)
After adding those lines to your file, let me know if you are still not seeing those in the WorkBench mapper! As a reminder, Specify 7 supports uploading data to (nearly) any field and table, so we encourage you to explore using that for data imports going forward!
Thank you Grant for your response! Unfortunately, I had already tried that and I still haven’t been able to get them to appear in the WB. Perhaps I am importing the resources (Form Sets) at the wrong level? I tried at the user, collection, and discipline level.
Also, yes, maybe it is time to transition to Sp7!
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Hi @freyma,
These resources should not be imported into Specify directly. These XML files are not considered “form sets” as they are not valid as a form definition.
In this case, you will need to replace the files in your Specify 6 installation directory (on a Mac, that would be /Applications/Specify/config by default) with the ones I provided above. These are the files Specify looks at to determine which fields are usable in the WorkBench.
You should save a backup copy of the originals somewhere on your computer just in case you have any trouble. Let me know if you still don’t see it then!
Aha! It worked! Thank you for explaining that the WB files do not load through the resource imports. Much appreciated!!
This still doesnt change the fact that I should think about moving towards Sp7, but it does give me some breathing room. Thank you very much!
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