Forum OpenACS Q&A: User Demographics Stuff

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1: User Demographics Stuff
Posted by amit singh on 01/05/01 08:21 AM
Which module and tcl file is used to stuff the user_demographics table
in the database
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2: Response to User Demographics Stuff (response to 1)
Posted by amit singh on 01/06/01 12:16 PM
Which module and tcl file is used to stuff the user_demographics table in the database
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3: Response to User Demographics Stuff (response to 1)
Posted by David Eison on 01/08/01 05:14 PM
Looking at an ACS classic 3-3-1 install (don't have a version of openacs or ACS2.3.3 handy, sorry), I don't see anything that sets user_demographics.  There is a query in admin-procs that will use it if it exists, some code in admin/users for updating it or using it, but nothing I see sets it.

find . -name "*.tcl" | xargs grep -i "demographics"

is probably the best place to start.  I don't know the history of this table so it may have been used to a different extent in earlier versions of the ACS.

I would think you would want to modify your registration process with optional fields for entering demographics info (or a new page for entering info, depending on how much you want to put up front).

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4: Response to User Demographics Stuff (response to 1)
Posted by S. Y. on 01/08/01 06:31 PM
If I remember correctly (my memory is getting foggier by the minute), the user_demographics stuff has never been implemented in a publicly released version of the ACS toolkit. It's just crufty code from the Paleolithic Era.

Occasionally and unintentionally (we presume), code customized for an ArsDigita client makes it way into the source tree. The data models for both the pets modules (www.pogopet.com) as well as the photodb module (www.photo.net) appeared briefly in ACS releases, only to disappear in a subsequent releases. (Yes, I know the photodb module has now released for general consumption.)

Since this question has been repeatedly asked on the web/db forum at www.arsdigita.com, one can safely assume that ArsDigita has no plans to release the Tcl procs that support the user_demographics table.

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5: Response to User Demographics Stuff (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 01/08/01 11:49 PM
I'm positive the code came from an aD client site, and was incompletely moved over to the toolkit release, simply because the code's old enough that it dates from the days when toolkit work was completely driven by client needs...

Another example is the geocentric bboard code, which was done for the pollution-tracking site Philip and others did about three (?) years ago.  The code requires table contents and Tcl pages that aren't provided, and has never worked in any ACS Classic release.  Knowing that, I didn't even bother rewriting the outer joins when I ported bboard over to Postgres...

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6: Response to User Demographics Stuff (response to 1)
Posted by S. Y. on 01/09/01 01:45 AM
Don's correct. The geospatialized version of the ACS Classic bboard relies on data that's not there (I believe it was put there for www.scorecard.org). Also, a previous version of the ACS Classic e-commerce module required a ZIP code table with geospatialized data that certainly wasn't open source (might have been the Levi Strauss ikhakis.com experimental web site).
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7: Response to User Demographics Stuff (response to 1)
Posted by Cynthia Kiser on 01/09/01 03:59 PM
Topic  drift: the zip code .dmp file that the ecommerce module expected was purchased data that aD could not redistribute. However if you need zip code data, Jon Griffin's ACS Reference module contains zip code data from the latest census. You can get this at cvs.arsdigita.com in the packages cvs tree. I think the file contains the data in insert format; not sure if there are any edits that need to be made to use the file to insert into a postgres db but sure someone will post to this list if they have occaision to grab it and do the conversions.