There doesn't appear to be a lot of information regarding working with SDIF data. I found a few old threads on this forum which is how I ended up here. I am working with our neighborhood swim team to get them off of the paper process they have used forever. We now have an electronic database of swimmers and parents and all of their information which we want to import into Hy-Tek or one of the other Team/Meet Management applications.
Are there any resources or forums available for this sort of a technical discussion? Is it ok here?
Hy-Tek seems to have the dominant share in Team/Meet management but the program isn't very easy to use and is even harder to import data into. Is this experience common or am I missing something?
In my conversation with Hy-Tek they fully expect all of the data entry to take place in their tool. Do people really do this? I entered 3-4 swimmers information and it takes a while - I can't see doing this for 150-200 swimmers.
Any experience with WinSwim? It looks like a viable competitor and it's import options appear to be a little more promising. Can it share results/entries with teams that use Hy-Tek?Thanks - please point me in the right direction if this isn't where this disucssion belongs.
Mike
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Mike Walsh - mike underscore walsh at mindspring dot com
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You can find the SDIF file format definition on the USA Swimming web site, it is a pretty simple plain text format that is not difficult to produce and Meet Manager can read these files too.
I have the SDIF specification from USA Swimming and have been working from it. Unfortunately, while Meet Manager states that they support SDIF, it isn't completely true. They support of subset of SDIF - namely the part of it which deals with meet entries. They do not support the LSC Registration Pyramid (A0, C1, D1, D2, and Z0 records) which is what I would like to import since the D1 and D2 records contain all of the detailed contact information for each swimmer.
It turns out WinSwim supports importing this sort of data through an ASCII format and the developer already has a beta version which supports importing the LSC Registration Pyramid. I ran a quick test this morning and it works great so at this point I am inclined to purchase WinSwim isntead of Team Manager/Meet Manager. I have traded e-mail with Hy-Tek on this subject over the last couple of days and they have no plans to support the LSC Registration Pyramid.
Maybe I don't need the full contact information to do manage our swim team but I was a bit surprised how difficult Hy-Tek makes it to get information into their tool and they don't seem the least bit concerned about it. I wouldn't even want to enter just the names, birthdates, and ages for an entire swim team by hand - is this what most people do?
Mike
PS: WinSwim can share data with Hy-Tek - I need to verify it but everything I have looked at so far shows it can send and receive meet data with other teams who use Hy-Tek.
You can find the SDIF file format definition on the USA Swimming web site, it is a pretty simple plain text format that is not difficult to produce and Meet Manager can read these files too.
I have the SDIF specification from USA Swimming and have been working from it. Unfortunately, while Meet Manager states that they support SDIF, it isn't completely true. They support of subset of SDIF - namely the part of it which deals with meet entries. They do not support the LSC Registration Pyramid (A0, C1, D1, D2, and Z0 records) which is what I would like to import since the D1 and D2 records contain all of the detailed contact information for each swimmer.
It turns out WinSwim supports importing this sort of data through an ASCII format and the developer already has a beta version which supports importing the LSC Registration Pyramid. I ran a quick test this morning and it works great so at this point I am inclined to purchase WinSwim isntead of Team Manager/Meet Manager. I have traded e-mail with Hy-Tek on this subject over the last couple of days and they have no plans to support the LSC Registration Pyramid.
Maybe I don't need the full contact information to do manage our swim team but I was a bit surprised how difficult Hy-Tek makes it to get information into their tool and they don't seem the least bit concerned about it. I wouldn't even want to enter just the names, birthdates, and ages for an entire swim team by hand - is this what most people do?
Mike
PS: WinSwim can share data with Hy-Tek - I need to verify it but everything I have looked at so far shows it can send and receive meet data with other teams who use Hy-Tek.
