Top Ten link

OK, folks, it's time to ante up or get out of the game. While a complete list of swim times is not so important to some swimmers, it is to me. I have thought about this problem for over 10 years without taking any action. I agree with Michael Moore that having it mandated to the USMS via our local LMSC groups will take at least 5 years. I'm old enough to remember the 5-year plans from the former Soviet Union too! So, I'm just going to start on this myself & see what comes of it. In consultation with Jim Matysek, I've taken the files for the Pacific SCY championship meet and am in the process of creating an SDIF file that can be imported into the USMS database. It's taken quite a bit of fooling around initially but, in the long run, I think I would have to invest less than 2 hours to do this in the future. That for a meet with 823 swimmers. This is a big harvest for the database. The process involves saving the HTML file to a text file by copying it into a word processor such as Notepad. The saved file can then be imported into Excel and, with the help of a custom template and some custom macros, converted to an SDIF file. I have the men's results ready to go and the women's results will be done by early next week. If this works, it will appear in the database by the time Jim gets back home. As for completeness, we can never guarantee completeness. However, I have trolled around on the LMSC web sites in past years looking at meet results, trying to anticipate what my standing in a particular event might be. I've gotten pretty close in most cases. So, we would need to find out what meets are in the database for a particular course season. As a starter, we could cajole meet directors to create the SDIF files if they have the meet data. This is what Jim did to me for the Arizona meets which are now ALL in the database for 2002. Once this is skimmed off, we can fish for other meets not represented and do the conversions. I think this can be done without bringing up any legislation either at the local or national level, and have a pretty good database. It is not going to be perfect, however. Neither is the top ten. I know of at least one case where a TT chairman missed a deadline & those swimmers slipped through that filter. Anyone else in the game? mel dyck

OK, folks, it's time to ante up or get out of the game. While a complete list of swim times is not so important to some swimmers, it is to me. I have thought about this problem for over 10 years without taking any action. I agree with Michael Moore that having it mandated to the USMS via our local LMSC groups will take at least 5 years. I'm old enough to remember the 5-year plans from the former Soviet Union too! So, I'm just going to start on this myself & see what comes of it. In consultation with Jim Matysek, I've taken the files for the Pacific SCY championship meet and am in the process of creating an SDIF file that can be imported into the USMS database. It's taken quite a bit of fooling around initially but, in the long run, I think I would have to invest less than 2 hours to do this in the future. That for a meet with 823 swimmers. This is a big harvest for the database. The process involves saving the HTML file to a text file by copying it into a word processor such as Notepad. The saved file can then be imported into Excel and, with the help of a custom template and some custom macros, converted to an SDIF file. I have the men's results ready to go and the women's results will be done by early next week. If this works, it will appear in the database by the time Jim gets back home. As for completeness, we can never guarantee completeness. However, I have trolled around on the LMSC web sites in past years looking at meet results, trying to anticipate what my standing in a particular event might be. I've gotten pretty close in most cases. So, we would need to find out what meets are in the database for a particular course season. As a starter, we could cajole meet directors to create the SDIF files if they have the meet data. This is what Jim did to me for the Arizona meets which are now ALL in the database for 2002. Once this is skimmed off, we can fish for other meets not represented and do the conversions. I think this can be done without bringing up any legislation either at the local or national level, and have a pretty good database. It is not going to be perfect, however. Neither is the top ten. I know of at least one case where a TT chairman missed a deadline & those swimmers slipped through that filter. Anyone else in the game? mel dyck