Race Results and Rankings Database

[Nick Penfold]

I've emailed all the organisers with email addresses in the Calendar as follows. I'd like to get a discussion going about any issues involved.

Duncan Berriman is working on a database which will handle rankings, and eventually perhaps all race results - something that will remove the need for a lot of our present work and provide much greater capability than we have now to track individual paddlers' development and so on.

One of the issues that arises from this is how we get race results into the database. In principle this is simple: a results file is uploaded. In practice, if there are many different systems in use a lot of work is involved in making sure each format uploads correctly - even if they are all in Excel, or can provide a CSV file. We badly need to reduce the number of different systems being used, and the purpose of this email is to ask you to consider - if only for next year's races - using one of the commoner systems rather than a local one of your own.

In an ideal world I would like to see everyone using Ken Trollope's Simply Slalom - already, I think, the most commonly used. It does require Excel, but apart from that Ken asks only for a donation to the RNLI in exchange for its use. Those who already use it would speak for its ease of use - and the fact that it calculates even inquorate class points and Div 4 promotions correctly, which as far as I know nothing else does.

Having said that I am aware that, for example, in Scotland there is a national ranking scheme which is fed by the SCA's own results system, and there may be other places too that have special needs.

Can I ask clubs, please, to consider at least adopting some system in common with other clubs, and Simply Slalom if there is no special need to use something else.

[slink]

You get my vote Nick, and you should find that West Lothian, Stirling and CR Cats results will be from Simply Slalom. I have also tried to "break" Simply Slalom over the winter (with a bit of help from Ken) by using it to do handicap events, and I have to say it made our life a whole lot easier - and it didn't break! We'll again be using it this weekend for Scottish Schools, using the CLS field to record the entrant's school in addition to the usual information. I look forward to using the new remote results display this weekend too - with remote results being displayed well over a hundred metres away from control!

Steve