[odb-help] ODB Weekly Update; Photos in ODB database?

[Rich Cowan]

Hello ODB users!

   Here is some more news you might be able to use!


1.  OC / Secure Sponsorship Conference Saturday June 21

   The session of our annual conference in New Haven on Friday, which
includes a brief demonstration of ODB, is completely full!

   But if you still haven't registered for Saturday, you may do so now.
Please see http://organizenow.net/conference.html.   There will be one
or two workshops on Saturday at which ODB will be shown as
part of digital divide or organizing related projects.


2.  Questions and Fixes

   -- We had a question from an ODB user about what to do when
      someone added records in Access and then ODB wouldn't
      open those records properly [ODB is not designed to allow
      people to add data directly from Access.]  Today, if you go to
      the ODB web page, you will see a utility that takes a database
      you did this to and fixes it.
      http://www.organizenow.net/odb/fixnulls.exe

   -- We had a question from a political campaign trying to import a large
      voter file.  But the import did not complete.  The first thing I should
      mention is that ODB will actually ask you if you want to resume, and
      you should be able to continue importing data if you do this.
      The second thing I should say is that if you find any bugs like
      this, search for the last name imported:

      a) Click on Select Records
      b) Click on Search (click OK when asked if you want to
          select all the people in your database)
      c) Sort on ID (click the head of the last column in the search results)
      d) Click on the sort button that says "ID" and change the sort order
          to "descending".
      e) The first name listed is the last record that successfully imported.
          This will enable you to resume importing if you want!

    -- We noticed while assisting a local peace group that if the data had
       quotes in the first name field, the import would not work properly.
       ""Patricia"" would be imported properly, but
       "Patricia "Trish"" would not be imported; an error would occur.
       For now, the best solution to this is to search for the " symbol in 
Excel
       before importing and remove it from the middle of any import field.

   This week there will be one or two minor bug-fixes.  These bug fixes
   are already detailed on the ODB web site:  http://organizersdb.org, in
   the release notes for version 0.9.3.


3) Photos in ODB Databases?

Please see the question below that came in today, regarding storing images
in an access database and somehow tying that to ODB.

a)  It is definitely a desired feature in ODB to allow external documents to be
associated with a record.  Whether this will eventually be done really depends
on us receiving some funding to implement it; we are not now, nor have we
every been, flush with resources to spare.  It might be less expensive for
your group to finance the new feature (thereby making it available to all
ODB users) than to hire a consultant to create a whole new system for you.
If anyone else wants that feature please speak up!

b) A possible design for this that is quite elegant is that there be a small
"paper clip" icon in each person's record and you click on it to see 
attachments
be documents:  there would be an Images folder inside the ODB database
folder and it would have 26 folders (a-z) inside that storing the images.

If there is only one attachment that would open right up; if there are many
a list of the attachments would appear with an option to delete the
attachment or add a new attachment.

c) It's hard to say whether this would work with your GBC system.  You
might want to find out where it stores the images.  Software that
stores images inside a database is rare; but if they are small photo
ID images perhaps that's what they are doing.

Hope this helps.

-rich cowan
oc@organizenow.net

At 03:29 PM 6/16/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I'm exploring using ODB for a local organization.  Can ODB store an image 
>file for each record?
>
>Here's my scenario:
>
>a local Latino/a org wants to develop a new membership database.  each org 
>member is issued a photo id.  currently they have 6000 records stored in a 
>GBC Video ID System w/basic contact info. and a photo.  the GBC system was 
>built using access. they anticipate a large jump in membership in the 
>coming year (possibly up to 10,000+ new members).
>
>Thanks!
>
>Lisa
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>Lisa Harris
>Senior Project Manager
>NetCorps
><http://www.netcorps.org>www.netcorps.org
>
>Durham, NC 27705