[APBeta] Linking Observations to Plans

[Paul Rodman]

On Aug 20, 2011, at 9:19 AM, James Macak wrote:

> When I converted my AP version 1 plans to version 2, in order to make sure I knew which was which, I prepended the names of the converted plans with "V2-". Hence a version 1 plan called "Finest NGC" in version 1 was converted and saved under the name "V2-Finest NGC" for AP version 2.
> 
> Now, when running AP Version 2, when I choose "Show Observation Database" the observations that were imported from  Version 1 do not have a plan associated with them. Instead the "Plan" column shows "n/a".
> 
> Is this due to the name change?
> 
> If so, if I change the V2 plan names to the V1 plan original name, will the links to the plan in which the observation was entered be reestablished?

This has been a difficult issue to resolve. In V1 the plan field for an observation just contained a file name, not a path. This seemed less than optimal, so in V2 the plan field contains a path which is a bit more optimal, as long as you don't change the path or delete the original file.

I don't think anything special was done when transferring from V1 to V2 (I'd have to check), so it could be that this information is not being transferred.

I've wanted to dump this field, since I believe it's less than useful, but many users feel it's necessary. So it has stayed.

What I can do, fairly easily, are several things:

1. When the V1 to V2 conversion takes place (or shortly thereafter), gather the V1 plan names and ask the user to match these with the original plan documents (even if they are still V1 plans).

2. Whenever a V1 plan doc is converted, change any plan fields in the obs database to reflect the path to the new V2 plan.

3. Allow the user to associate a plan document to one or more observations manually.

4. Whenever the observation database is opened, check that the plan documents pointed to from observations still exist, and if not deal with the problem appropriately (this might be a manual operation as it could take a while, and/or be annoying).

Let me ponder this further.

Paul R.