Australian Antarctic Division 
Database Development Case Study

After 10 years of research on Adélie penguins, Australian Antarctic Division biologists Knowles Kerry and Judy Clarke were overwhelmed with data. While monitoring eating habits, reproduction rates, and nesting behaviour of the penguins, Judy and Knowles had stored the data in a collection of spreadsheets. Some of the data were collected manually, while others were collected automatically, resulting in a number of discrepancies and a need to integrate the two collections. Trying to get information from these data was becoming increasingly more difficult, hampering efforts at drawing important conclusions from the research.

Judy and Knowles turned to The Quill Consultancy for help.

After extensive systems analysis and design, The Quill Consultancy was able to reorganise the Excel spreadsheets into an SQL-compliant database. In moving the data across, inconsistencies and discrepancies were discovered and corrected. The Quill Consultancy developed several reports and queries to allow Knowles and Judy to extract the information they needed to do further research. For example, the proportion of penguin chicks surviving to breed can now be quickly determined and their mean age at first breeding calculated. The system also allows daily nest-observation data to be linked with automatically collected records from a weighbridge system—a process that had previously been tedious and time-consuming.

The Antarctic Division is planning to take the penguin database system to Antarctica in October 2000, to more easily continue research efforts.

Access 97 was used as the front end, and an SQL-compliant database was used as the backend. Total implementation time for the project was 2 months, and involved one Quill consultant. 

Customer Comments

“I am thrilled I can finally access the information I need to do my research. The database system has been very easy to use and Quill has been helpful and thorough in their analysis and support.
I have attended Access training classes at Quill in the past, and have found their level of knowledge and expertise to be exceptional.”

Judy Clarke

Biologist

Australian Antarctic Division