Consultancy: Modification to Data Identification
This document describes the current data labeling and cross referencing systems used within PAMGuard and available for use in other programming languages such as Matlab or R. The current system is functional, but has a number of deficiencies making it hard to cross reference between data visible on the GUI, records in the PAMGuard database and data in the PAMGuard binary files.
Three alternatives are discussed in section 6 which might improve on the current systems. These are
- Maintaining, but improving on the status quo through better documentation and a library of data access functions in Matlab or R
- Adding additional numeric identifiers to all PAMGuard data. This would involve modifications to file and database formats which would not be backwards compatible.
- The use of time as a unique identifier
