Swimming Computer Software

Originally posted by osterber Hy-Tek, for reasons I have never understood, and argued with them at length about, tends to be very Microsoft-y about how it does business, and not at all "open". The CL2 file format is remarkably similar to the SDIF format, except that there is a checksum at the end of each line. It's trivial to write software that will _read_ a CL2 file, but it's just about impossible to write software that will _generate_ CL2 files correctly, since the checksum algorithm isn't published anywhere. Hy-Tek refuses to share it. Why they do this is beyond me. They do support the SDIF format, which is nice. But the CL2 format actually does things a little better. For example, there is an ambiguity in the SDIF format for people with multiple names. Since SDIF puts first and middle names into a single field, if someone's name is: Mary Elena Something Someone it's ambiguous as to whether the first name is 'Mary Elena' or the middle name is 'Elena Something'. CL2 I believe breaks first and middle names into distinct fields. There is also the XSDIF format that is coming out, slowly. It's an XML format pushed by USA Swimming, and is open. Hopefully, we will see adoption of that format by Hy-Tek, so that format can be used for good purposes. As for the *.mdb Access databases that Meet Manager uses, starting with Meet Manager 2.0, those databases are password-protected so that you can't go into them. In theory, the purpose of this is so that you can distribute a meet backup file, and there is a flag that says "don't allow any changes to the meet", so people can't fake out your results later without your permission. The database password is set by Meet Manager, and cannot be changed or viewed by you, the user. To give instructions on how to circumvent that password would probably be a violation of the DMCA. On a completely separate topic, if you do a google search, there are lots of free utilities out there to recover lost passwords on MS Access databases. -Rick Pffffft on them letting us into the files. It is my database, I should be able to access it.

Originally posted by osterber Hy-Tek, for reasons I have never understood, and argued with them at length about, tends to be very Microsoft-y about how it does business, and not at all "open". The CL2 file format is remarkably similar to the SDIF format, except that there is a checksum at the end of each line. It's trivial to write software that will _read_ a CL2 file, but it's just about impossible to write software that will _generate_ CL2 files correctly, since the checksum algorithm isn't published anywhere. Hy-Tek refuses to share it. Why they do this is beyond me. They do support the SDIF format, which is nice. But the CL2 format actually does things a little better. For example, there is an ambiguity in the SDIF format for people with multiple names. Since SDIF puts first and middle names into a single field, if someone's name is: Mary Elena Something Someone it's ambiguous as to whether the first name is 'Mary Elena' or the middle name is 'Elena Something'. CL2 I believe breaks first and middle names into distinct fields. There is also the XSDIF format that is coming out, slowly. It's an XML format pushed by USA Swimming, and is open. Hopefully, we will see adoption of that format by Hy-Tek, so that format can be used for good purposes. As for the *.mdb Access databases that Meet Manager uses, starting with Meet Manager 2.0, those databases are password-protected so that you can't go into them. In theory, the purpose of this is so that you can distribute a meet backup file, and there is a flag that says "don't allow any changes to the meet", so people can't fake out your results later without your permission. The database password is set by Meet Manager, and cannot be changed or viewed by you, the user. To give instructions on how to circumvent that password would probably be a violation of the DMCA. On a completely separate topic, if you do a google search, there are lots of free utilities out there to recover lost passwords on MS Access databases. -Rick Pffffft on them letting us into the files. It is my database, I should be able to access it.