Future Development
In order to ensure that Recorder 6 remains at the cutting edge of biological recording software, it is essential to continually develop new features and enhance existing ones. The following table lists some of the developments that have been proposed for Recorder 6. Each development listed includes a guide to the cost of the development, or is labelled as "In Progress" if it is already scheduled for a future release.
If there are any developments that you or your organisation feels would be particularly useful and that you might be able to fund, either in part or entirely, then please contact Recorder@JNCC.gov.uk. This applies to both developments in this list and any other ideas you may have.
| Development | Description | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Invalid samples, events and locations | Ability to flag events, samples and locations as invalid (e.g. when a grid reference is known to be wrong). They are then excluded from reports. A filter is available to allow invalid items to be easily located. You do not need to be a record custodian to mark it as invalid. | Medium |
| Sort order for taxon observations | Ability to sort taxon observations in the hierarchy so that they appear in the same order as they were entered (e.g. the order on the record card list). In addition, allow sorting by taxonomic sort order. | Small |
| Missing common names | Where a taxon has no common name, currently the common name is set to the preferred (scientific) name. It would be better to use the taxon group name when available. | Small |
| Termlist export | Enable the export facility from the Termlists screen. This allows all non-system supplied terms in the currently selected list to be exported. | Small |
| Polygon Linked Reports | Enable XML reports to integrate with the Map Browser window's polygons. When the user has selected a polygon in the map window, a right click menu of XML reports which are linked to polygons is available, plus any saved Wizard Reports. On selecting a report, Recorder calculates the list of samples that fall inside the polygon and passes them into the report. | Medium |
| Polygon Reports integrate into Observations Hierarchy | Allow any report that is available for linking to polygons to be automatically accessible from a survey, event or sample automatically. This default behaviour can be overriden by specifying a survey, sample or event specific where clause type for the report. | Small |
| Reporting against a spatial reference point | If the user right clicks on the map without first selecting a polygon, then they are also able to select a report from the list of reports available that are linked to polygons. If they select a report, then they are shown a parameters entry screen first which requests that they specify the size of a buffer around the selected point in metres or km. | Medium |
| Report on a bounding box | Add a mode to the Map Window allowing a bounding box to be drawn (at the moment this can only be done when selecting a bounding box, say, for a survey). The drawn bounding box is then available as an input filter for polygon XML Reports, where all samples that fall inside the box are included. | Small |
| Improved Location Report Querying | Add an option so that when you do a "Report about a Place" and select one or more locations to report on, there is a tick box that allows you to include in the report any occurrences that fall within either a polygon or grid squares linked to the location(s) even if they are not explicitly linked to the location(s) in the observations data. This is done using a spatial query. | Medium |
| Report Spatial Filters | Add an option to the wizard that allows you to specify one of the following as a filter for the report:
a) a list of grid squares b) a list of one or more spatial references, with a 'buffer' distance specified. c) A bounding box (already supported) d) A list of polygons (already supported) Grid square entries can be entered simply by typing into a list, or copy and paste (which accepts multiple entries if delimited). Allow this filter specification to be saved and loaded to an XML file for later re-use (a bit like the specification of polygons that you can save when reporting). Note that any of these options may incur a performance impact on the report. |
Medium |
| Polygon Reports Additional | Allow XML reports that are designed to link to either a map polygon or a sample to be also run from the Run Reports dialog. When accessed from this dialog, Recorder automatically generates a parameters screen with a box allowing you to type in grid squares to run the report against. Therefore it would be easy to run the XML reports against lists of grid squares. Lists of grid squares could be saved and loaded as templates. | Medium |
| Snap to Grid | Enable a 'snap to grid' facility when drawing map polygons and grid squares, with options to snap to 10m, 100m, 1km, 10km. | Small |
| Print Setup Dialog | Change the default Report Print menu option to display a standard Print dialog first, so that a printer can be selected and configured. Link this to the Print Grid option on the Report and also the Report Designer. | Small |
| Report Web Repository | Linking the XML reports dynamically to the web (e.g. by using RSS to publish the reports available directly into Recorder). There would be an online repository of reports with an RSS feed to allow the user to see the list of reports. A selected report is automatically downloaded and run (and could be cached locally?). | Medium |
| Improve Run Reports Dialog | Update the Run Report dialog used to display a previously saved report (or an XML Report) to display a hierarchy allowing the user to locate reports more easily. Note that hierarchical information is already embedded in the XML Report format for the Quick Report popup menu. | Small |
| Snapshot Scheduling | Ability to schedule a report snapshot. This is done by providing a standalone exe that can run a snapshot specified on the command line, then the user can schedule this using the scheduler built into Windows. | Medium |
| Simple Snapshot | Add to the Report Output menu ability to create a single table snapshot of an XML Report output. Add a menu item - Single Table Snapshot. This has a submenu with New. on it, plus a menu item for the 10 most recently used single table snapshots. If New is selected, then display a dialog requesting input of the database, login, and table name details (like the first page of the snapshot wizard), then dump the data into it. If a previous snapshot is selected, then prompt the user first and if confirmed, overwrite the snapshot table. | Medium |
| Report filtered by Designation | Add a page to the Report Wizard that allows you to select species to include by their designation, rather than by selecting the species. E.g. a species report that includes everything on the Wildlife and Countryside Act. This could be a "hierarchical ticklist" with the top level being the status kind. Therefore you can tick or untick all Wildlife and Countryside acts in one go. | Medium |
| Google Earth support | Allow map datasets to be exported into Google Earth. | Small |
| Additional Import Wizard Column Types | Allow import of the following column types in the Import Wizard: Event Weather, Sample Start Time and Sample Duration. | Small |
| Sort Occurrences by Taxonomic Order | Allow taxon occurrences listed under a sample in the Observations screen to be sorted by taxonomic order. | Small |
| CCN144 | Enable the ability to export direct to Microsoft Excel format from the Report output screen (for the Report Wizard and XML Reports). This replaces the Export to Excel addin. In addition, consider support for Word, Access, plain text, csv, PDF. | In Progress |
| CCN143 | Separate the dictionary upgrade process from the application upgrade process. This will allow the deployment of new dictionary content to occur much more rapidly. | In Progress |
| CCN142 | In the new import wizard, at the Species Matching Page, it would be useful if we could search on preferred checklists, rather than having to manually specify a checklist to search on. | Small |
| CCN141 | In the taxon dictionary browser, it would be useful to have a search facility that searches for taxa across checklists, not just in the currently selected one. It would work in the same way as the Find Taxon dialogue that gets opened when typing in a taxon name or abbreviation in the data entry screens. On selecting a taxon from the find taxon dialogue, the relevant taxon dictionary and taxon would be opened and selected. | Small |
| CCN140 | At present, columns returned by the Report Wizard are returned in a somewhat random order - they're all over the place. It's possible to re-arrange them by dragging and dropping, but rerunning the report after saving (File > Save As... on the Filter Results screen), the column order is lost. It would make sense if the column order got saved along with the report. | Small |
| CCN139 | When using the current import wizard for Recorder 6, if
the user matches a location in the spreadsheet with a location from the
database the location name in the spreadsheet is not saved. For example, the
record in the spreadsheet has a location "Arne Reserve". The user links "Arne
Reserve" from the spreadsheet to the "Arne RSPB Reserve" location in the
database. When the import is performed all the records with location "Arne
Reserve" are linked to "Arne RSPB Reserve" and the name "Arne Reserve" is lost.
This CCN proposes to store the location name as specified in the import file in the sample's free text Location Name field. |
In Progress |
| CCN137 | Make network install kit compatible with SQL Server Express | In Progress |
| CCN136 | Make standalone install kit compatible with SQL Server Express This does not include full product testing on SQL Server 2005, so it remains unsupported. However, initial tests indicate that Recorder works fine on SQL Server 2005 or Express. | In Progress |
| CCN135 | As the amount of data in the Taxon Dictionary has grown,
the time required to open and browse the Taxon Dictionary window has grown
significantly. This is because the queries required to select the data are
quite complex. In addition, there is sometimes a noticeable delay when opening
a sample to view the taxon occurrences. This CCN involves improving performance
in both these areas. There are 2 significant causes of complexity in the Taxon Dictionary queries. These are the need to identify if a node has any children (to draw the + symbol by the correct nodes), and also the need to identify the taxon validation level to determine if a red ! should overlay the icon (for 'critical' taxa). The first issue can be resolved by adding a field, 'HasChildren' to Index_Taxon_Name and return this in the query results. This flag is set to 1 for taxa which are preferred on their list and have children within the list. The critical taxon facility has never been used in real data as the validation level field has never been populated. Therefore the facility to draw a red ! can be removed to reduce the complexity of the dictionary queries. In addition, the critical taxon red ! facility is removed from the Observations screen for taxon occurrences, also reducing the complexity of the query run when a sample is opened. |
In Progress |
| Recorder Internationalisation | This project entails the conversion of all text messages in the Recorder system into a format suitable for localisation into any language. | Large |
| Recorder Web Toolkit | The Recorder Web Toolkit provides a web interface for rapid data entry, reporting and distribution mapping using a Recorder 6 database. This project has completed the design phase but is seeking funding for the build phase. Further information on this proposal is available on the documentation Wiki. | Very Large |
| Recorder Web GIS Enhancements | This involves the provision of an enhanced web interface for Recorder's mapping functionality making it suitable for assisting in planning decisions. The interface can either operate standalone or as a module within the Recorder Web toolkit. | Very Large |
| CCN92 | Making the Provenance of a taxon occurrence into a controlled list rather than free text. | Small |
| CCN103 | Provide a tutorial database on the installation CD. The user can optionally install this database, and if installed, can log in either to the main database or tutorial database. The tutorial database is pre-populated with data. | Medium |
| CCN104 | Enhance Recorder's handling of unhandled errors. Provide a facility to email the error for support, and provide better error tracking information through the use of an error handling component. | Small |
| CCN107 | Enhance the format of the file saved for a Report Wizard to allow the user to reload a previously saved report, then click the back button, modify settings in the report and re-run the report. At the moment, the back button is not available for loaded reports. | Medium |
| CCN109 | Allow the results grid for the Report Wizard to be re-sorted by clicking on the column titles. Also, enable a search option to locate data in the grid. | Medium |
| CCN110 | Enhance the report generation process so that reports load in the background, allowing the user to continue using other Recorder screens whilst a report is being prepared. | Medium |
| CCN112 | Improve the performance of the related data facility. The example case was selecting Related Data for an individual, selecting to display samples. This can take a few minutes if there are many observations for the individual. In addition, add a related data item to display items in the Taxon Dictionary when a taxon occurrence, sample, event, survey or location are selected (e.g. for a location, get the list of species into the dictionary). | Large |
| Recording Card Abundances | The record card entry screen currently generates a record to indicate an abundance count of 1 if no other abundance information provided. Make this configurable, so that values such as 'present' may be used. | Small |
| CCN125 | Using runtime packages to reduce executable and addin file size. The principle here is that by deploying the Borland Delphi library code packages once to every machine, then the executable and addin files will not need to include this code themselves, reducing the size of the files significantly. This makes the download of future updates more manageable. | Small |
These ballpark figures are for guideline purposes only and are based on the following scale:
| Cost | Ballpark figure |
|---|---|
| Small | less than £1000 |
| Medium | Between £1000 and £5000 |
| Large | Between £5000 and £10000 |
| Very Large | over £10000 |
A fixed price cost is provided once the requirements are fully defined.
