Recorder 6 for Recorder 2002 Users

2      SQL Server / MSDE

3      Hardware requirements

4      Installation

5      The Recorder 6 database

7      Upgrades

8      Documentation

9      The Taxon Dictionary

10    Data Entry

11    Reporting

13    Exporting data

14    Transferring database custodianship (edit rights)

15    Mapping

16    Database Tools

1  Introduction

Recorder 6 has been developed to overcome the limitations of the capacity of Recorder 2002.  It contains a number of significant enhancements, but the core functionality of Recorder 2002 and Recorder 6 is very similar and hence to the user, the two systems look more or less the same particularly with regard to data entry.  Also, the data model, and hence the database structure, in the two systems is nearly the same but, in Recorder 6, the data is held in a Microsoft SQL Server database whereas in Recorder 2002 it is held in a Microsoft Access 97 database.

JNCC gave the Recorder Approved Experts (Authorised Resellers in the Recorder 2000 licence agreement) the go ahead to start supplying Recorder 6 in September 2005.  The first version to go on general release was version 6.6.8.59 but the latest version as at March 2009 is 6.13.3.182.

Recorder 2002 users are advised to consider moving to Recorder 6 if they are approaching the capacity of Recorder 2002 – approximately one million observations (records), encountering the ‘Out of memory’ errors that occur in Recorder 2002, having trouble with Recorder 2002’s reporting, or if they specifically need some of the new facilities in Recorder 6, such as the improvements to the Import Wizard for importing observations from Excel/text files, etc.  The problems associated with reporting across taxonomic lists and reporting in taxonomic order are resolved in Recorder 6 for most taxa.

This document is designed to highlight the differences between Recorder 6 and its predecessor.

Like Recorder 2002, Recorder 6 can be installed on a single computer or on a network but unlike Recorder 2002, different installation CDs are required for the two options.  Separate installation guides are also available:

• Standalone Installation Guide v3.1
• Network Installation Guide v5.1

These can be found in the Documentation folder on both versions of the CD.  Also in this folder is ‘Release Notes.doc’ and ‘Recorder 6 Report designer tutorial.doc’.  These versions of the installation guides can also be downloaded via the links in the following post on the NBN Forum from Sarah Shaw on 25/09/07: http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?pid=2013#p2013. This version of the Network Installation Guide first became available on the version 6.10.4 installation CDs.  It is a significant improvement on its predecessors.

The latest version of the installation CDs are labelled v6.13a but they install Recorder 6 version 6.13.2.176 although the latest version is now 6.13.3.182.  JNCC didn’t issue installation CDs for this version so users need to install version 6.13.2.176 and then upgrade to 6.13.3.182 using the upgrade that can be downloaded from the download latest version page although it is better not to run any upgrades until you have transferred your data from Recorder 2002.  The next version, 6.14, is due to be released in July 2009.