Data Export and Transfer
All databases have characteristics that can sometimes impact upon exporting data out to import into another database and/or make available as an online data feed on the web. Two characteristics of databases and therefore data that can have an impact on this are:
All databases have characteristics that can sometimes impact upon exporting data out to import into another database and/or make available as an online data feed on the web. Two characteristics of databases and therefore data that can have an impact on this are:
-- Character Encoding --
-- - Field Specifications --
>> Character Encoding
This is how characters, i.e. letters, numbers and symbols, are encoded and translated by computers. There are different ways to encode characters, e.g. UTF8, UTF16, ASCII, Unicode, universal character set. Each encoding method has advantages and disadvantages. See a good discussion on Wikipedia about the pros and cons of UTF8 for example. The tricky aspects of character encoding (and where odd results pop up when data has been transferred) often come when dealing with different languages and symbols. ASCII was designed for for example does well with American English and generally used symbols but it doesn't handle for example special mathematical or linguistic symbols or Arabic script.
What to watch out for: curly quotes, ampersand symbol, letters with accents, long dashes. You may need to do a "find and replace" to: straight quotes, the word "and" in full, letters without accents, short dashes (respectively) to get around these problems as workarounds.
>>Field specifications
Database fields have specifications, which commonly can affect data exporting, i.e. data types, character length, field names, data format and data types.
> Data types
Data can be alphanumeric or numeric in value and so data can be captured as letters and numbers combined or just numbers. Good examples to distinguish this are dates: alphanumeric "July 2010" or numeric "01072010".
> Character length
For example: a "date" field is often very short, but "title" field is longer but often shorter in character length to a "description" field. Some databases have unlimited character lengths in some field and some might very clearly limit the fields to ~8 characters (in the case of date "01072010" or "July 2010"), ~100 characters (in the case of titles "Object Name") and to 1200 characters (in the case of descriptions "This object was used in this situation...").
> Field names
Notice the field used in these examples have names "date, "title" and "description" so some explanation of what that name means can be important when transferring data. Date is a field name that is highly contextual, i.e. date of "what"? Date of birth, of publication, of acquisition. Title can to some people mean a person's status "Mr" or "Dr" or "Ms". So it is important to know the context of a field name, i.e. "title" means the short name of the object and this appears on the exhibition label - or - "title" means the publication details that appear in the front page of a book. Description is a very broad term and it can mean anything so context is important, is it acquisition, historical use or provenance description?
> Data format
Already with these three fields there are some conventions around how that data is formed, i.e. its format. For example, a date can be aplphanumeric like "July 2010" (month year) or it can be numerical "01082010" (ddmmyyyy). With title it might be important to pay attention to conventions with using capitals like "Object Name". With descriptions it might be important to pay attention to the use of symbols and characters that are commonly used in writing text e.g. quoting from texts with curly quote marks or using long dashes such as (This object was used in this situation... when person A used it in a concert they said to the audience 'how amazing - how truly amazing this object is'..."). Also some fields constrain whether letters, symbols or numbers can be input.
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Mundaring Arts Centre's 2012 Exhibition Programme
As part of our committment to supporting artists and developing our community, we feature regular exhibitions throughout the year.
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