NE South Dakota Clark, SD | paul the original - 12/6/2018 13:46
Is this data of any value to, say, the next generation? Is this something we can have and hold over the decades?
It seems all this electronic data we accumulate is for use this month, maybe next year even, but as time goes forward the software is only a yearly subscription. We don’t own it, we have difficulty exporting it, and software changes often enough we can’t use the data formats 5 years into the future. Even if you keep up with the subscriptions, Miss a year and it all gets away from you.
I presume the original poster wants to map and store the tile outlet locations for, say, the next ditch cleaning 20 years from now.
Is that possible, or just a pipe dream?
How do we keep data for future use?
Paul
I think it has huge value. You should be able to keep it for decades. It is all about data management. If you save it, it is data. If you have it organized so you can find it again, that is data management. This does not matter if it is paper or electronic.
If you are only using data for a month or a year, you are probably not using data to its full potential. If you have purchased software, you do own it. Even without paying the annual maintenance fees with most software companies, you still have access to your data, but you may have a tough time loading new data or exporting data to controllers if monitors have been updated to new software. If you are paying an annual fee to have a company pull all your data into an easy to access place, you may not own it or have access to it after you quit paying the annual fee.
I feel keeping data for future use is very possible. You just need to know how to manage it.
Shape files have been an industry standard since the beginning of GIS mapping. If you can get it into a shape file format, any mapping software should be able to load it for generations.
I also highly encourage people to keep a copy of their raw data directly from the monitor just in case they ever need to reload it into a different software package.
Last but not least, back up your systems that hold you data. |
mapping tile outlets
