To create a collection from a period of record dataset using a date range:

  • From the DSSVue View menu, select Condensed Catalog.
  • Select a period of record dataset. A period of record dataset is usually one that spans several years.

  • From the Collections menu, select New Collection from Period of Record.

  • You will be prompted to enter the starting ("Figure: Prompt for Starting Date and Time") and ending ("Figure: Prompt for Ending Date and Time") date and time of the data that will l be copied from the period of record for each member of the collection.

    Figure: Prompt for Starting Date and Time


     

    Figure: Prompt for Ending Date and Time


  • Dates should be entered in the form DDMMM or DDMMMYYYY. And times should entered in hours and minutes of a 24-hour clock: hhmm or hh:mm. For values less than 10 for days (DD), hours (hh), or minutes (mm), leading zeros are required.
  • As indicated in the prompt, you do not need to enter a year, since the date range is year-independent. However, if the time window of data you want to copy for each member is longer than 1 year, the year must be entered and will not be ignored. For example. If you want 15 months of data, spanning October to December, copied from the POR dataset into each collection member, then if you entered 01Oct 0000 and 31Dec 2400, you would get only 3 months of data; the correct entries are 01Oct1901 0000 and 31Dec1902 2400.
  • If the timestep (interval) of the data is less than 1DAY, you must enter start & end times with the start & end dates.

  • If your date range extends beyond a single year, include the year and time in your start & end date/time specification.

  • Next, you will be prompted ("Figure: Prompt for Starting Sequence Number") to enter a starting sequence number (first member ID number). You can leave it blank if you want to use the data's original year as the sequence number (most common).

  • Figure: Prompt for Starting Sequence Number


  • Lastly, you will be prompted to enter the date and time for the first data point of the collection ("Figure: Prompt for Date and Time of the First Value in each Collection Time Series").

    Figure: Prompt for Date and Time of the First Value in each Collection Time Series


  • The prompt will provide a suggested date and time based on the start date and time you entered; it will include the year 3000, which is often used for generated data that is intended to be year independent.
  • Review the suggested data and time carefully. The time suggested is sometimes a poor choice—for example, it may suggest 0001 as a start time for 1DAY data when a more appropriate value would be 2400. In addition, you may want to use a different base year for your collection
  • Click OK to create the collection.

The plug-in will process its way through the time window of the selected POR dataset and copy (from each year) the data within the date range you specified into a new dataset. Each new dataset will be assigned a collection member ID number starting with the sequence number you provided or with the year the new dataset was copied from. And, the time of the first value of each new dataset will be the collection start date and time you entered.