[Qgis-user] Intended work-flow for joining table to layer?

[Bernd Vogelgesang]

Hi,

since some versions, the once  "trivial" task to join tabular data to a  
layer became very annoying and time consuming.

We have a normal point shape and an excel file which we want to join.
Export xls to csv, import through the wizard, no deal.

But using the joins from the properties is changing the field names by  
adding the table name in front of the original field name.
This may be intended to prohibit confusion with the origin of the field,  
but its causing a lot of work, cause even if you keep your table name as  
short as it can be to be still meaningful, the combination with my still  
short field names plus the table name completely destroys the field name  
when saved as shape again.

table name  = join
field names: FIELDA, FIELDB, FIELDC etc

Result after save:

join_FIELD, join_FIE_1, join_FIE_2

Even with such short names, all information is destroyed, so we have to go  
to the table manager (which a lot new user will not know for sure!) and  
rewrite the field names completely. For 20+ fields that's no fun at all.

The second alternative to join data is through the processing toolbox  
"Join attribute table".
This works great for combining to layers without that field name  
hokuspokus, but at least in V2.0 on Windows (my collegues computer is not  
updated yet), you can only select layers, tables can't be selected, so you  
can't join them.

I had the very same issue on another dataset with 2000 items some days ago  
(on Win7, V2.4): The "normal" join took ages and produced unreadable field  
names, the Toolbox join didn't work, so in the end I fiddled myself into  
Spatialite to be able to join those darn data sets.

I will stick to the Spatialite approach, but for my collegues, this is  
completely beyond the scope.


Can anyone share their work-flows for joining data which is doable by  
normal dudes too?


Cheers
Bernd

-- 
Bernd Vogelgesang
Siedlerstraße 2
91083 Baiersdorf/Igelsdorf
Tel: 09133-825374