wilbev - 2/23/2011 00:31 So can you give some further detail and evidence on shape files being a poor means of recording application data? Shape files can have up to 13 character floating point so I highly doubt you are going to have any problems with calculations. Sure whoever created the shape file could have limited the decimal places, but that is implementation problem not a file capability problem. And what do you mean by lack of needed attributes? You can have up to 255 fields or attributes of data. Not following your argument here. Section control on a spray boom. Shape files have no set standard to tell you how many sections the boom has, how wide each section is, whether the section is on or off, what the current active width of the total boom is, etc. The same applies to the active width of the head when harvesting. That is just one example. There are many technical limitations to shape files. Shape files are good from some types of data. Soil types and soil test data are an example. But logging application and harvest data are not good uses of shape files. I am all for open standards and have spoken in favor of them on this board many times. But limiting data logging to the use of shape files is a terrible idea. The shape file is a dinosaur. Shape files were developed by Esri for use in their ArcExplorer software. Esri dropped them in their own software about 10 years ago because of the technical limitations. Shape files do not contain spatial projection information. By definition, they are "unprojected shape files". To limit the industry to shape files would be like telling farmers that they could only run John Deere 4020 tractors. The 4020 was a good machine in its day. But there is much better technology today. | 
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