Scientific Notation and EDP

Upon importing an EDD with an Excel file type into EDP, some fields may be expressed inconsistently using scientific notation and decimals.

Within the EDD-View:

Typically, this can occur when the Excel file’s cell is formatted as Scientific. The cell can contain the data as a decimal, but it will be expressed to the user using scientific notation. If EDP is configured to Use_Number_Formatting = False, the raw data will be imported instead leading to the inconsistent use of scientific notation and decimals within EDP.

Configuring EDP to Use_Number_Formatting = True will force EDP to recognize the value contained in the cell as expressed to the user in Microsoft Excel.

Note: Changing configuration of Use_Number_Formatting will require EDP to restart. If EarthSoft.EDP.UseNumberFormatting is configured in the ST_CONFIG table, then it will take precedence over the user setting in Professional EDP.

Within the Package-View Window:

When creating a package, EDP will retain the original value from the EDD where possible to maintain data integrity. When mapping to the database, if the database field is a numeric data type, then it will populate the data as a decimal value, whereas if the database field is varchar, it will retain the original value in scientific notation.

For example:

In the EQEDD format, TestResult_v1.result_value field maps to both DT_RESULT.RESULT_NUMERIC and DT_ RESULT.RESULT_TEXT. A value of 1.1e-5 will map to RESULT_TEXT as “1.1e-5” and will map to RESULT_NUMERIC as “0.000011”.

Note: Typically, trailing zeroes are trimmed when stored as decimals in a database. So there are multiple fields in the database that use varchar instead of a numeric data type as this allows for an accurate storage of significant figures.