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There are two methods for users to add records to the database:
1. "Drag & Drop" files and folders into a ground motion collection
2. "Import Tool" imports ground motion files or entire folder and subfolders containing records with different file formats. The import tool allows the definition of specific file format and debugs importing errors. This tool display messages after importing records that helps the user to get information about the error.
3. Use the "Import Metadata from csv" tool to import ground motion records by importing a csv file containing the metadata of the records. This tool has two options:
3a. Import one Triplet per line from csv
3b. Import one Component per line from csv
In the "Drag & Drop" method, the files are dragged from a folder on the computer disk into a collection in the Ground Motion Library. QuakeManager then checks all the files for a valid ground motion format, and imports the valid ones to the database. If the record has header information, metadata is extracted and stored in the database.
In the "Import from csv" methods, the user prepares a csv file that defines the metadata of each records, and also specifies the file disk location for each record (which contains the acceleration history data). This method can require more work but allows a large amount of metadata to be imported for each record. Note that the acceleration history is NOT included in the csv, but only record properties (metadata information).
The advantage of the "Drag and Drop" method is that it can be very quick to add records to the database, but the metadata fields imported are limited to the file header information, which can be very limited for some file formats (e.g. PEER NGA format). The advantage of the "Import from csv" methods is that they allow great flexibility and control over the import of metadata fields, but they require additional effort from the user to prepare the csv files.
Once records are imported into the database, their intensity parameters and spectral values are automatically computed and stored in the database making them immediately available for search and selection. In this sense, the database is "Self-Building".
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