Difference between revisions of "Using Staging Area Generator"

• Host: since the SAG tool has to be run on the target server, the value for this field should always be localhost
• Port: port of your target Postgres database server installation - the default is 5432 (which is also the port on which IMSMA is running on the source)
• Database: this is the name of the staging area database to be created. You can specify any name here, using lower-case alphanumeric characters and underscores. If a database with the provided name does not yet exist, the SAG tool will create a database with that name on the target database server. If a database with the provided name already exists, the content will be dropped and recreated by the SAG tool. If, for any reason, the database cannot be created, an error message will be displayed. For example, if the specified target database name contains upper-case letters, the following error message will be displayed:

Contact your GICHD IM advisor if you are unsure how to solve that.

• User: this is the username of the database user that should be the owner of the staging area database. The default is imsma - however, this will only work if the staging area is created on the same database server on which IMSMA is running. On another, independent, database, there might not be any user named imsma. In that case, another, existing, user can be provided, or the database superuser named postgres can be used.
• Password: password of the above user.
• Postgres User: the above defined user that was specified as the owner of the staging area database might not have the permissions to actually create the new staging area database. Therefore, a user with enough permissions has to be provided here. However, if the staging area is generated on the same database where IMSMA resides, then the imsma user can be used, since it has all required privileges. The default is therefore imsma.
• Postgres Password: password of the above user - in case of doubt, leave the default (password).

• If a staging area with only a subset of the IMSMA data should be generated (in this case the SQL file would include DELETE statements)
• If sensitive data (e.g. victim names and addresses) should not be transferred to the staging area (in this case the SQL file would include UPDATE statements to set all the victim names and addresses to NULL)
• If data has to be pre-computed for reporting purposes
• If additional database views are necessary, also for reporting and analysis purposes

Contact your GICHD IM advisor for help in developing SQL statements according to specific requirements.

• A connection to the source database will be attempted
• A connection to the target database will be attempted - if a database with the specified name does not yet exist, it will be created
• Some data will be read from the source database in order to populate the Additional Options section.

In case of an error, the related message usually specifies what the exact issue is.

• Conversion Language: specifies the language in which the staging area database should be created. This refers to the translation concept in IMSMA^NG. For example, the English values for the status of a Land include Open, Worked on and Closed. However, in IMSMA translations of these terms into other languages can be defined. Considering this example, the option chosen in the Conversion Language field specifies which value will be written into the status_enum field of the HAZARD table in the staging area. If a translation does not exist in the specified language, it will default to English or, if this is not available, to the IMSMA base term. When translations are heavily used, it would be possible for instance to create one staging area in language 1 and another one in language 2, with the same data but values in different languages.
• Gazetteer Seq No: this option allows to specify the flattening of the country structure into the main object tables, if gazetteer alternative names are used in IMSMA^NG. Alternative names in the country structure, if defined, have a sequence number. For example, if for each country structure element two alternative names are defined, the first one has sequence number 0 , the second one sequence number 1. If the standard gazetteer names should be used in the staging area, choose None. Otherwise, choose the appropriate sequence number.
• Do Geodata: this is a switch to enable/disable the generation of geodata. The staging area can either be created with non-geodata only, or including all the coordinates (points, polylines and polygons), i.e. the data stored in the GEOPOINT, GEOSPATIALINFO and related tables in IMSMA^NG. Refer to the section on geodata below for more details.
• Target SRID: when generating geodata in the staging area, the data can be re-projected. The Target SRID allows to define the projection. The default, 4326, corresponds to WGS 84 and 3857 corresponds to WGS84 Web Mercator. For a complete list of available projections, issue the following query on an empty staging area (i.e. the one created after clicking on Validate Selections):

select *
from spatial_ref_sys

You may also consult http://spatialreference.org/ to find the SRID that you would like to use. PostgreSQL is using the EPSG standard.