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

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Bernd,

And for how many centuries should be cripple QGIS just because of these
stupid Shape-file limitations?

I know - I am not very funny. But for the rest of the world, that does
not have to deal with ESRI Shapes the table prefix in the column names
is really very useful.

Maybe there should be a special mechanism in the ESRI shape export
dialog that allows some intelligent magic to shorten field names - not
holding back the rest of QGIS. Something like a regular expression
substitute mechanism for column renames where you can define the rules
for column renames - e.g. replacing prefix names or taking the first 4
and the last 3 characters.

In my opinion this would be much more useful than crippling QGIS into
short column names.

Andreas

Am 19.08.2014 09:44, schrieb 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
>