Duplicate Attributes

[KashifRehan]

Dear All,

We are using ArcPad with Trimble ProXRT GPS for the collection of electricity distribution network data. Occasionally I have seen that attributes of some features are duplicated. For example we are collecting serial numbers and rating of electrical equipment, sometimes some features have same serial numbers which should not be the case. The strange thing is that the data was collected in different dates and locations are different but attributes are same. Please advice how to overcome this problem.

Thanks

[GarethWalters]

Hi,

A couple of questions:

• Do you manually enter the serial number?


• Have you investigated any in field data verification/validation?


• What is the system you are putting these features back into? SDE, Personal or File Geodatabase or shapefiles?


• Do you want to validate before you enter the data or back in the office

Before you go out into the field to use this information, what QA are you doing in the office to make sure that you have unique values in the system?

Because there is no method in ArcGIS to create a unique ID other than the objectID), or more to the point an auto incrementing file like Access, SQL etc. ArcPad will follow the ArcGIS standards. however using ArcPad you can use validation to check values so that you know the data is correct in the field before you synchronise with the larger system.

Why not have a reference (non editable) AXF that has all of the previous collected data in it and then when you add a new serial number in the editable AXF you can run a SQL query to validate against every record that has been collected. This could also be done with a dbf if you so desire using the "find"method in a script.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Gareth