ExcelTamer

The ExcelTamer brings back order into altered EXCEL templates, which cannot be imported without causing any errors. It assigns unknown sheet and column names to the correct names using an alias list. Missing sheets and column names are added also, if possible.

Data Systems

An Excel template is divided into three systems.

Ingest Data

Ingest data is the actual research data. The tables are e.g. the following: Cruise, Station, Sample, Subset, Biota, Sediment, ...

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Lookup Data

The lookup tables contain the entries for the lookup tables of the database. The tables are for example the following: Person, Gear, Dataset, CRS, ...

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TaxonWizard Data

These tables contain data of the administration tables, which are used by the TaxonWizard to build and check the taxon list. The tables are e.g. the following: TaxBase, TaxAaid, TaxPrivate, ...

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Uniqueness of Names

Case sensitivity

All names are checked at import case sensitive, but are also all unique in lowercase.

Sheets

The sheet names of the three systems are unique for the whole EXCEL Workbook.

Columns

The column names (header) are unique for each sheet.

Aliases

For all sheets and columns there are alias lists, for which the same uniqueness applies.

Short Description of the Taming Process

Here follows a short description of the algorithm.

Phase 1 - Catch Unknown Names and Tame Using Aliases

Phase 2 - Add Missing Things