Importing multiple files into one well: best practice

With v2 you can export all the data for one or more wells, including all versions, as one file. This is reasonably simple to import. However, data are often not as neatly packaged as this and it may need to be imported from a bundle of different files - for example when different contractors have produced different portions of the well data and it needs to be synthesised in one database. Extra care needs to be taken in these situations.

Workflow

Some important points to note:

  1. You can have several organiser windows open at once. A sensible first step would be to open each file in a separate Organiser window. Use the open file icon to read in the files (non-guided import), and from there you can browse the data in each file and decide what order to import it.
  2. Next you should save the well - you could do this from the Match Wells dialog in one of your Organiser windows. Then you can match well in each Organiser window.
  3. Once you have saved the well, you can open it in Samples & Interpretations. This gives you a live view of the data you've got - it will be updated automatically as you save in stages from Organiser. Likewise, if you make changes via Samples & Interpretations (such as modifying intervals or deleting data), it will be updated in Organiser without you having to reload the files. If you have a second monitor, you could detach the charts tab and have it open while you do the import - you can see the data being added and quality control it as you go along.
  4. Before you save any data, check that the samples list is correct (see below).

Samples

The samples list is what all other data in the well is based on, so it is very important to get it right. Sometimes data coming from different sources is not sampled in quite the same way, and you need to avoid duplicates in your sample list.

There have been some fundamental conceptual changes to 'the sample' since previous versions of StrataBugs. The main difference is that samples are allowed to have 'null' top or base depths. It is best to record the sample depth range if you know it. You can set a system preference for using tops or bases of samples (in the Control Panel), and this affects the matching process. The combination of top depth and base depth makes the sample unique, and a 'null' depth is included in that - i.e. null-100m CU is not the same sample as 100m-null CU.

However, the Organiser does deal with the situation where your database has duel-depth samples and your incoming data have only single depths. You should read the notes on this page to familiarise yourself with this.

When you get to step 4 above, you should double-click in the Samples column for each of your Organiser windows and examine the sampling. If any of the samples are ranged, they should be saved first. Then any non-ranged samples will match them if the base / top is the same (depending on your system preference). You can press Save on the Match Samples dialog to save the samples from that file. When you have saved some samples, the status of on the other Organiser windows will update, and you can see which samples are new in each file. Do not be afraid to save and delete as necessary at this stage - no other data will be affected yet.

When all the samples are saved you can move on to the other data.

Versions

Interpreted data (e.g. chronostratigraphy, biozones) should arrive with complete schemes. If these are similar to schemes that you have (e.g. they are meant to represent the same thing but may use different abbreviations), you can match them to your own schemes. If this is not the case, it is best to import the schemes as they are in the file, but put the well data in a separate contractor version.

When the data are imported, you may wish to re-interpret the intervals using your own schemes. Then, if you wish, you can delete the contractor data and their schemes, to save cluttering up your database.


Page last updated: 28-Jul-2014 9:39