Hi Matt,

Unfortunately, that query method is not available in v3. I think your best 
bet would be to use normal data fields for everything, and just uniformly 
put in January 1st for the date. Then the normal date filtering should work 
just fine. On the front end (if you pursue that route) I'd be happy to give 
a little guidance to modify reports, etc. so that only the year is 
displayed.

Of course you could really dig in and add < or > queries. This would 
require work from the front to back, so I'm not sure whether it's a 
realistic amount of work given your resources.

Adam

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 3:16:58 AM UTC-6, M Hobson wrote:
>
> Dear Dennis,
>
> Thank you for your reply. We are using date fields with day, month, year 
> format for information resources. We are also using the measurements form, 
> but I cannot find any documentation for how the search bar works to query 
> the measurements: "Area>100" , for example, does not seem to work. For this 
> reason, we are unclear about how to move forward to get querying 
> functionality. 
>
> If it did work, we would quite happily use integer fields for our dating 
> of archaeological sites. For these, we rarely require a level of accuracy 
> beyond a single year. Some of the dates are fuzzy, but others are precise. 
> For this reason most other projects I have worked on use four fields for 
> dating. Terminus post quem and terminus ante quem for the start date, 
> terminus post quem and terminus ante quem for the end date. This helps us 
> deal with both certain and uncertain dates. Inscriptions or dates from 
> written sources often provide the exact year, or provide us with a terminus 
> post quem or terminus ante quem (for the construction of a theatre during 
> the Roman period, for example). You can then query on these fields quite 
> happily to return results for the date ranges you are interested in. First, 
> one needs to have a query logic that can handle integers, however.
>
> Any advice about how to move forward would be much appreciated. Moving to 
> v4 is a tricky subject because we have over 150,000 sites recorded, a 
> figure which is growing daily.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, January 19, 2018 at 7:47:32 PM UTC, Dennis Wuthrich wrote:
>>
>> Matt,
>>
>> Yes, you can create and query numeric fields within Arches v3.  To 
>> confirm this, just look at the Measurement form in v3 to see that numeric 
>> fields are supported.
>>
>> Based on your summary, it sounds like you want to modify the default 
>> graphs in v3, which is akin to altering the database schema in a 
>> traditional web application.  That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do in 
>> v3.  And like a traditional web app, if you alter the database schema, 
>> you'll need to update (or create new) data entry forms and query logic in 
>> your app to take advantage of your new schema.  So, you IT support folks 
>> are correct: in V3 you'll need to do a bit of coding to reflect your new 
>> graph (e.g.: database) changes and the new query functionality that you 
>> want.
>>
>> FYI, this all changes in Arches v4.  In the latest version of Arches, you 
>> can update graphs and Arches will automatically create new data entry 
>> forms, update the search (query) function, and automatically update the 
>> content of reports to reflect your new graph design.
>>
>> One last comment: your use case sounds more like managing dates than 
>> managing integers.  In fact, its sounds like you're talking about "fuzzy" 
>> dates.  That is, describing things that happened in the year 1100 BC (-1100 
>> in your example).  Implicit in this kind of discussion is the uncertainty 
>> in the date.  That is, 1100 BC is like an approximation (could the real 
>> value be 1099 BC? of 1105BC?).  These kinds of temporal data are quite a 
>> bit more sophisticated than simply treating dates as negative integers.  
>>
>> The Arches team is currently working on a new data type to represent 
>> fuzzy dates using something called the "Extended Date Time Format"  (see 
>> https://github.com/inukshuk/edtf-ruby for implementation details).  This 
>> will extend the ability of Arches v4 to record and query on incomplete 
>> dates like  -1100 (note the lack of day and month, which would make this a 
>> true date), as well as the uncertainty associated with fuzzy dates.
>>
>> Hope this helps.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Dennis
>>
>> On Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 1:17:10 AM UTC-8, M Hobson wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Is it possible to use and to easily create and query numeric fields 
>>> within ARCHES v3? 
>>>
>>> I am working for a project at the moment that has been using ARCHES v3 
>>> for a number of years and all of the dating is handled as text fields e.g. 
>>> 'Roman', 'Iron Age' etc. This is causing us problems when we want to 
>>> implement our database in partner countries that use different labeling 
>>> systems. One solution would be to use integer fields for start and end 
>>> dates. I have worked on other databases in the past which have made use of 
>>> negative integers for BC dates and positive integers for AD dates. I am 
>>> being told, however, by our IT support that ARCHES cannot support this? To 
>>> be precise I am being told that I myself would have to write the front-end 
>>> and back-end logic to handle the fields that I would like to implement. 
>>> That is, some new code would have to be written in order to handle a 
>>> numeric search in ARCHES v3. Obviously the integer fields can be created in 
>>> postgres and I am comfortable with how to do this, but I really need some 
>>> step-by-step help in order to understand how to get ARCHES to integrate 
>>> with such fields.
>>>
>>> To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, in the midst of the 
>>> discussion about chronology I have realized that all of the fields 
>>> currently being used in the project database avoid the use of integers. 
>>> Numbers of archaeological features are recorded as text e.g. 1 to 5, 6-20, 
>>> or 21-50! This leaves us with no way of querying in a quantified way e.g. 
>>> Return all sites where number of theatres is greater than 1.
>>>
>>> Any help with this issue would be most appreciated.
>>>
>>> Matt Hobson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>

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