It is wise to think about data management when using PATN. What do I mean by data management? Basically data management is having a strategy about how your data is stored, managed, displayed, recovered and re-used. Always assume that you or someone else will want to go back to your data and/or analysis at some point in the future.

If you want to save a lot of angst, an understanding of a few basics will help a lot.

The outputs from PATN depend on what is output. There are three basic types of output from PATN-

 

Project File

All analysis results are stored in PATN's Project file (a database with the extension 'PTN'). This database will however only store the latest analysis results so it pays to save Project files when any changes are made to the Data or analyses. A key strategy that should be used is

Tools | Options                Project Comment box

should be filled in with considerable detail and care to reflect the exact description/status of the file. That way, any recovery/re-analysis is hopefully self explanatory. We do not plan to change the format of the Project file, but, you never can tell! If we did, we would try hard to ensure that previous versions were automatically handled.

Comma-Separated Variables File

PATN can export all numerical results, usually in comma separated variables format. These files can be read by Excel and most other statistics or analysis programs. As these data are from the Project file, there is usually little reason to export to archive. The only exception here is the Data Table itself -

File | Export | Data Table

This file is CSV and is probably a very SAFE format for long-term archival.

Images and Video Files

PATN exports all graphical material either as EMF format (enhanced meta file - vector-based) or occasionally as BMP (image based). As these are images, they can be edited by any decent image editor. Contact me by e-mail for more details about image editors.

 

In short, the best strategy for data management is to ensure that well-documented multiple copies of the PATN Project files are maintained along with an occasional CSV dump of the Data Table if it changes.