[Bug-gama] Feature request: Allow usage of id and time attributes in obs

Hello.

Here at the Danish National Mapping Agency (http://eng.sdfe.dk/) we are currently redesigning our geodetic registry that stores information on all geodetic benchmarks, and observations between them, in Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. A key component of this registry is the interface to gnu gama. We are planning on using gama for all adjustments and hence we are developing a module that can output coordinates and observations from the database to XML files that gama can read. The same module will also be able to load information to the database from an output file from gama. The basic workflow when updating heights of benchmarks goes something like:

1. Select relevant coordinates and observations from the database

2. Create gama XML file

3. Make adjustments with gama, save output XML file

4. Load adjusted heights from output XML file into database

In the last step we would like to keep a record of which observations was used to determine a given coordinate. In the database we have a table that keeps track of exactly this connection. For this we are using the database ID’s of both the coordinate and the observations since an observation isn’t uniquely determined by just the “to” and “from” benchmarks (there can be quite many observations between the same two benchmarks). This makes it somewhat difficult to create a connection between coordinates and observations based solely on the output files from gama. Therefore it would be nice if gama would allow the usage of an “id” and a “time” attribute in the observations tags (<dh>, <s-distance>, etc.) of an input XML file. These attributes would of course only be useful if they are transferred to the output file. Such a feature would make gama much more useful in a large production system as the one we are currently building.

Is there an interest in adding such functionality to gama? I am happy to make the changes myself but I may need a bit of guidance along the way since I am not particularly familiar with the gama code base. Below I have made a short example of how I imagine an input file looking once these changes have been made. The output file will be similar.

Best regards,

Kristian Evers

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<gama-local xmlns="http://www.gnu.org/software/gama/gama-local">

Demonstration of additional usefull tags for observations.

Based on the skorepa-gako2010.gkf example file.

</description>

<points-observations>

<height-differences>

</height-differences>

</points-observations>

</network>

</gama-local>

From:	Kristian Evers
Subject:	[Bug-gama] Feature request: Allow usage of id and time attributes in observation tags in XML files
Date:	Tue, 18 Dec 2018 12:43:02 +0000