[COL-Users] COL downloads changes

Scott Chamberlain s at chamberlain.work
Thu Mar 18 23:48:43 UTC 2021


Hi, 

I had been using the downloads available at https://download.catalogueoflife.org/col/monthly/ to construct a SQLite version of the database here https://github.com/sckott/col-sql to make it easier for users to use. 

Two questions, the 2nd with many parts:

1. Will https://download.catalogueoflife.org/col/monthly/ continue to be updated every 2 or 3 months with a new database dump?

2. If the answer to (1) is yes: The format changed in the last database dump "2020-12-01_acef.zip".
a. The included file names changed, and file types changed from .tsv to .csv (although the data still appears to be tab-sep). Was it intended to change to comma-sep? 
b. Will there be more changes to the monthly dump? 
c. Will the release cycle be something predictable? Every 2 or 3 months?
d. The files have a lot of "\N" in them. Is this supposed to be a newline character? I've not seen a newline with a capital N.
e. Any schema to use for these various csv files?

Thanks! 
Scott Chamberlain
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