Hi Michael,
I just need to mention SMART which integrates beautifully with CyberTracker and gives you a lot of the advantages (analysis, exporting data, reports, etc.) that you were talking about. For our case, I found it to be overkill and to focus too much on the typical reserve management scenarios (we do not manage a reserve or go on patrols, but we do have wildlife observations to record). But it might be a good option for your organization (or anyone else who has similar issues)?
Personally, I like to do as much of my analysis as possible in QGIS, so exporting the data to .shp files is enough (although it would have been nice if the .dbf file included a link to the pictures associated with a specific record).
HTH
Cheers,
Chavoux
Op Do. 3 Nov. 2022 om 08:19 het <cybertrackerwiki@googlegroups.com> geskryf:
Hi Chavoux,
thank you for the hint. But I’m afraid, the ESRI proponents wil prevail.
At the moment we are using MS SQL Server as backend for CyberTracker. This allows the collection of all sightings from all rangers in one place. Since the database is growing rapidly when pictures are taken, loading of the data in the desktop application is very time consuming in place with low bandwith. What I’m doing at the moment is exporting the data to “normal” SQL tables and exporting the pictures to the file system. This process is controlled by an MS Access application via VBA. The path of the pictures in the file system is stored in another SQL Server table that is related to the table with the exported sightings. Next step in the export process is to calculate the values of geometry and geography attributes that have been added to the table for the exported sightings from the decimal degrees provided by CyberTracker. Now the data can be used for analysis in i.e. QGIS, ArcGIS, spreadsheet software, and for web services if wanted. For visualization of sightings, related pictures, and the location I’ve developed an Access client that contains a table view, a picture browser, and a bing maps client in a form with subforms. I think this is a very flexible solution that can be easily migrated to other SQL servers supported by CyberTracker and avoids data export in different format and the danger of data sets with differing content. Changes to the data are directly available to all applications that are using this table. Only if data is edited in the CyberTracker desktop application, these changes will be available not until the next data export. But this doesn’t happen very often.
I will look now for means to transfer the data from ESRI Online to my SQL Server database. I’m quite sure that problems will arise with the pictures after exporting the the data to our local systems since storage space in the cloud is limited for us.
And, as I wrote, I’m curious about the possibilities of CyberTracker Online.
Cheers,
Michael