AbleDesign

[dartos]

What software do you need (results software) so that it works?

Josh Gerber

[Dan]

Any software application should work, unless there's anything very peculiar about it. All you really need is something that can export results either tab delimited or fixed width columns so that it can be copied into Excel and maintain column formatting. HyTek, for example, works well.

Cheers,
Dan

[dartos]

thanks so much

[dartos]

can any delimited result file work? because hy-tek can only export semi-colon? what other delimited files work? and what about multi gender results (seperate files?)??

[dartos]

oh one more thing? does it work with track meets also? and cross country races?

[Dan]

Yes, any delimiter will work, assuming you're using something like Excel to import with, as it allows you to define the delimiter upon import.

The basic process is, export a result set, import it into Excel, check your column formatting and adjust the order if necessary, add an auto-ID (blank) column, add an event ID column to match the Events entry for the results, then dump the whole thing into the database.

HyTek has a number of print to file options that should work, such as RTF and Word, as I recall. As long as it can output lined up columns, Excel can interpret things pretty well.

Multi-gender is no problem. If they're in the same results file, simply specifying M/F in the sex column will do the trick. If they're in separate files, placing the same Event ID in for both will make them one and the same in the database, or you could just combine and sort them in the Excel process. If they're in separate files and you want them kept separate, give them separate Events table entries and corresponding Event ID entries in the results files, and make sure the Event names are entered specifying which is which.

XC races definitely work well. Here's one such example:

http://runningmarylandsearch.com/

I also put together a customized XC team display for them, basically creating a fantasy list of the best teams in the area based on season best times:

http://runningmarylandsearch.com/xc_teams.php?sex=W&year=2005

It has a boys and girls list, each with team scoring assembled at the bottom, and each produce a weekly static list (to ease server burden). The above dynamic link is necessary since there isn't anything in the database yet for '06 XC, so the static pages are blank.

Track could work, but it's much messier. The problem there is that there are so many variations to event data, with metric and imperial conversions, prelims/finals, wind readings, etc. Also, row ordering becomes trickier with separate events within an event, so to speak. If you wanted to have track results in the database, I would probably go with two separate installations so that the track one can be modified some to make it work better. The ReSearch license would allow you separate installations on the same site for that purpose.

Cheers,
Dan

[dartos]

thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Dan]

You're welcome. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Cheers,
Dan