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Workbench and Locality name alias

Wed, 08/03/2011 - 07:49 — erno_kuusela

Is it possible to create locality name aliases in Workbench? Data set mappings don't have the required fields (localityNameAlias.name and localityNameAlias.source), so I tried to add them manually by modifying the configuration files "specify_workbench_datamodel.xml" and "specify_workbench_upload_def.xml".

I added following lines to ..datamodel.xml, under "Locality" table section:
<field column="Locality alias" name="localityAlias" type="java.lang.String" length="255" />
<field column="Loc.alias source" name="localityAliasSource" type="java.lang.String" length="64" />

And these lines to ..upload_def.xml:
<field table="Locality" name="localityAlias" actualname="Name" actualtable="localitynamealias" onetomanysequence="0" relationshipname="locality" />
<field table="Locality" name="localityAliasSource" actualname="Source" actualtable="localitynamealias" onetomanysequence="0" relationshipname="locality" />

The fields "Locality alias" and "Loc.alias source" appeared correctly in Workbench's data set mappings panel and I can add them to data sets. However, for some reason these two fields are always required: whenever a new locality is added, there also must be an alias. Not every locality has an alternative name/alias, so this behavior is not very useful. Did I do something wrong when I modified the config files?

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Mon, 08/29/2011 - 05:58 — rods

I will pass this on to the appropriate person.

Thank you for your patience.

Mon, 08/29/2011 - 17:16 — tim noble

workbench and locality name alias

Your modifications to the configuration files are correct. Unfortunately, the validation process in the workbench is not general and when tables are added to the standard wb configuration, problems may arise.
Much-improved and more generalized validation - capable of adapting to the LocalityNameAlias table - will be available in the next Specify update (date not yet determined). If you are comfortable using sql to modify your data, you could probably assign a dummy name and source to indicate non-aliases in WB datasets, and after uploading, run sql statements to delete all localitynamealias records with the dummy values.