This Links prototype provides an interface to curate the weekly data available from National Records of Scotland.
It allows for the uploading of individual CSV files, adds new data to the database, and indicates when there are new values for existing data. It uses the temporal features of Links to provide valid-time information about fatality counts.
It also displays the data, as well as changes to the data, at three levels.
- Individual counts (specified by the week and subcategory that the data applies to)
- Grouped by week
- Grouped by subcategory
It supports the answering of questions such as the following.
- How do the Male and Female subcategories compare in terms of the change in fatalities?
- How do the Male and Female subcategories compare in terms of number of updates to existing values?
Note that this is a prototype hence some functionality has not
been implemented and not all buttons in the interface will respond.
The CSV file uploading makes the assumption that uploads will occur in the order
the files were originally released, and unexpected behaviour may occur for a different ordering of uploads. Additionally, the CSV files for upload which can be found in the data directory have been modified, and uploading the CSV files from the original site will result in errors.
The database relation that stores the COVID-19 data is a valid-time table, and the one that stores information about weeks is atransaction-time table. Further details of the use of time is documented in the file uploadData.links. Examples of temporal feature usage can be found in the following files.
- Sequenced insert:
uploadData.links: lines 100-111 - Sequenced update:
uploadData.links: lines 167-174 - Current query:
viewData.links: lines 83-51 - Nested selfjoin:
provQuery.links lines 96-108 - Nonsequenced delete:
resetDB.links: line 17
The interface is built using the Links MVU library which utilises Bootstrap and which is based on the Model-Update-View paradigm. This separates the code for rendering webpages into two functions: a view function which describes how to render the current model information as HTML, and which returns a message when there is interaction with the page. The update function receives these messages, and makes modifications to the model depending on the message. After this, the page is refreshed. Typically, the database interactions occur when the initial model is defined, and when the update function calls the functions it needs for modifying the model, leading to a separation of concerns.
