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Technique to Globally Populate Component Plant Information

The discovery of a NASIS 3.1 bug that resulted in loss of component plant data motivated the development of a procedure and technique that may be helpful in the correction and population of component plant information. The technique can potentially be used to find missing data and globally populate component plant information. States that have used common plant lists for components correlated to a specific ecological site id (e.g. a specific range site) or have certain plants always present for specific soil component or phase of soil component, are candidates for globally populating plant information. The technique can be used to populate new data, improve data consistency, and re-populate lost data.

The example technique involves selecting a set of data based on ecological site id where the plant symbol is not all ready present. This technique is especially useful for re-populating lost component plant data.

  1. Create a new query for selecting ecological site id where plant symbol is not present. Enter the following query and save the query. Note: This query should be modified if selecting by soil component name or soil component name and phase are need and if other component (plant) tables are desired. 
    FROM component, component_potential_ecosystem
WHERE JOIN component TO component_potential_ecosystem
AND component_potential_ecosystem.ecosystem_id = ?
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM component_existing_plants, local_plant
WHERE JOIN component TO component_existing_plants AND
JOIN component_existing_plants TO local_plant AND
local_plant.local_plant_symbol = ?)
  2. With an empty selected set run the query, set target table to – Component Potential Ecosystem, enter ecological site id and plant symbol.
     
  3. View-Component Existing Plants of the first DMU and first component of your selected set.
     
  4. Insert a new row and enter missing plant symbol data.
     
  5. With the cursor in the new row copy the row by clicking the copy button.
     
  6. Click on the up table button to go the component table and with cursor in the component table click on the paste button.
     
  7. A Paste Option dialog box appears. Set option to - Paste Component Existing Plants To All Component(s) and set option – Keep Existing Component Existing Plants. After selecting paste options click on apply button.
     
  8. Click on down table button. The first component of the first DMU will have two records of the new plant symbol you just added. The record you added to make a copy of and the one you just pasted into all components. Select one of the duplicate plant symbols and File-De-select the record.
     
  9. Save your selected set, clear out your selected set with File-New. Repeat query as needed for the next missing plant symbol and ecological site id.

A variation one might consider of the above technique (if applicable) is entering a complete common plant list for the first component and pasting into all components. This is done with a modification of step 4, 5 and 7. In step 4 insert all the plant data need. Step 5 highlight all the new rows then click the copy button. In step 7 change Paste Option set to – Paste Component Existing Plants To All Components and option set to – Delete Existing Component Existing Plants. This variation may be appropriate where a state uses a common plant data list for a range site independent of which component the ecological site is correlated to or a common list is used for a phase of a soil component. This variation will update a complete list into all components currently in your selected set and delete the current list.