Some noteworthy milestones have been completed by PTAGIS staff in the past few weeks.
After several months of beta testing, the new website was promoted into production on April 30, 2013. When you visit www.ptagis.org you will be using the new website and reporting features. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we brought this system online faster than originally planned.
New self-service features were added during the promotion to allow the request and management of Tag Data Projects, Clip File Downloads, and the viewing of PTAGIS-maintained interrogation site Event Logs. More features will be added (such as interrogation site metadata management) and existing features refined during the next few years and we will announce them as they come online. Please feel free to send us questions and feedback in the Forums or the Feedback page located under the Community section of the website.
Separation-by-code projects have been coordinated this year using a request workflow implemented in the new website. Researchers and FPAC have given us positive feedback about this new system and that it has achieved the primary goal of making this process more transparent.
A new group of reports has been published in the advanced reporting system to assist data contributors with auditing the tagging and interrogation data they submit to PTAGIS. You can find these reports in the QA/QC folder under Standard Reports.
We also made some major changes on the backend and are operating two database management systems – the legacy system and the new system. Interrogation data files are now being processed directly on the new database server. Interrogation sites that are managed by PTAGIS are using M4 as the primary data collection platform and are submitting data files approximately every hour.
Tagging, recapture and mortality data are still being processed primarily on the legacy database server and are synchronized to the new database management system on a regular schedule throughout the day. It may take up to three hours for tagging data to become available in the new reporting system. Tag data files will be directly loaded into and reported from the new database system later this summer.
Interrogation data will continue to be collected by and loaded into legacy systems during this transitional period to allow continued evaluation of the performance of M4 and the new database system. Data collection and submission by M4 have been steady and separation-by-code efficiencies as good as or better than the legacy systems to be replaced. Data validation and reporting system audits are in place to ensure the quality of interrogation data. Staff has also developed a suite of new internal reports to monitor the new data collection systems.