The Data Corral provides a way to manage data for use in the Geographic Calculator. It provides a centralized location from which data can be referenced, organized, and described, regardless of its physical location. The data managed by the Data Corral may exist on the local machine, or it may exist on another computer accessible over a network.
The Data Corral may be viewed by clicking on the View menu and checking Data Corral. This will display the Data Corral window as part of the current Geographic Calculator.
Here is an example of the appearance of the Data Corral with added data:
In order to use the Data Corral, one must first populate it with data. This can be done in two ways.
The first is by right-clicking on a folder in the Data Corral and selecting the Add menu item. This will open a standard Windows Open File dialog, which can be used to locate any of the data file formats supported by the Calculator, including raster data files, vector data files, point data files, and geo-reference files.
The second is by right-clicking on a folder in the Data Corral, selecting Add Connection, then choosing a spatial database menu item. This will open a Select a Database Connection... dialog.
The user must provide appropriate connection information for the selected Database Type and then click OK. Clicking Test will attempt to open a connection to the specified Database and will inform the user whether the attempt was successful or not. Once the Database Connection has been created, it will display under the parent folder with an appropriate icon, with its tables listed underneath it.
The data in the Data Corral can then be organized by dragging and dropping it between folders in the Data Corral. You may also provide a user-friendly name and qualitative description for the data.
There are two primary components in the Data Corral: the data tree, and the property list. The file tree provides a hierarchical organization for the data in the Data Corral, and the property list provides information about the object that is currently selected in the data tree.
Once you have populated the Data Corral, you may use the data by dragging it from the Data Corral to various components in the Calculator. For example, you can drag a raster data entry from the Data Corral to the Image File field in a Transform Job to transform that image. Right-clicking on elements in the Data Corral will provide a context menu with relevant actions that can be performed on that entry.
The Data Corral also contains functionality to make and manage local copies of data files that are stored on another computer connected by a network. These local copies can be useful for users that plan to work with the Geographic Calculator in the field. While connected to a network, such a user can make local copies of the required data files, so that they will be accessible through the Data Corral even when the network is not accessible. To make a local copy of a file, right click on the entry in the Data Corral and select Make Local Copy. Once a local copy has been made, the local copy will always be used in place of the original copy, when accessed through the Data Corral. When the local copy is no longer needed, right click on the entry in the Data Corral and select Delete Local Copy to discard the local copy of the data. Note that this is only applicable to file-based data, not Database data.
See Data Corral Preferences for more information on setting up the Data Corral.