Opinions - HyTek

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:32:18 GMT

Meet managers can easily tell the teams submitting entries that they need entries in a Hy-Tek file because every team has to buy Team Manager. Last I checked there is a free "Team Manager Lite" that will create meet entries files if the meet entries person wants to hand-type in the seed times.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

mb windrath — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:01:32 GMT

Is this company the only game in the marketplace? Although by far in the USA Hy-tek is the most commonly used software, there are others out there. Easy Ware is one that is used by some. I'm not familiar with it, but years ago our LMSC Chair had complaints about Hytek as not being user friendly, so he started working with the guy who wrote Easy Ware and thought it was much better. I just googled it and besides that software there's another out there called Splash Software. Looks like Splash is used by the Europeans. Good luck finding what you want!

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 13:45:35 GMT

There are 11 high schools in our city and all are required to enter dual meets using HyTek. All of the coaches have learned to do it. Last year for the state championship, all AAA (larger high schools) had to submit entries with HyTek. It went very well. HyTek is used at all USMS Nationals. I don't know about USA Swimming nationals, but all local age group meets use it. Having run many meets by hand (hand seeding, watches only, manually calculating official time), I constantly marvel at how much easier it is now. I am one of these high school coaches who submits all meet entries this way, and I've always found it to be really easy to use. The program isn't perfect, but it's pretty easy. Once you get the rosters set up for your team and start importing results from the meets, it's easy to do entries for future meets. I think the key is having all teams on the same page and using the same system; that streamlines things (bad swimming pun intended). The only time it looks difficult to use is at the dual meets in our district without a touchpad where the officials at the computer have to enter times by hand - they're hustling to get it all in there in time to have results by the conclusion of the meet.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 06:19:31 GMT

What a great idea to have all use the same program ! It must solve a lot of problems! No one today gets together and says "let's all use Hy-Tek" for our meet entries. There is realistically no other choice. Meet managers can easily tell the teams submitting entries that they need entries in a Hy-Tek file because every team has to buy Team Manager.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 09:55:37 GMT

I appreciate everyone taking the time to give me their feedback and offer their opinions. it is unfortunate that in this free enterprise society we live in we are limited to what we have as tools and are really limited in choice. i am sure we could have this debate open for some time and its not different than windows vs linux, gm vs toyota, dems vs rep (pc vs lib) etc. however, if we are stuck to using this software it would be nice to have a piece that was more in tune to Masters swimming (ie module/interface) than to clump everyone under the same umbrella our 1st meet has come and gone and albeit it was a success for our club with our entrants and participation levels. so until next year when we host another meet our frustration levels will be in check :)

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:35:25 GMT

Check out this web site goeasyware.com I have used this for the Allegheny Mountain YMCA Masters Swim League for years and found it more user freindly than hy-tek.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:28:04 GMT

Agree with the above. Hy-tek tightly protects their little monopoly. It deters competition. Any competitor to Hy-tek would have to be well funded and willing to take on a long fight for market share. They need to have support from the timing console makers - who probably aren't too motivated to deal with a new software product/company that could embarrass them if it didn't work well in a big meet. I am curious - is Hy-tek Meet Manager used at the very largest international meets like Worlds and the Olympics?

RE: Opinions - HyTek

osterber — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:38:50 GMT

My biggest objection with Hy-Tek is that they have continued to adopt a very closed system. They do support the SD3/SDIF format, but everyone acknowledges (including USA Swimming) that SDIF is a legacy format and is missing many key features necessary for swimming data interchange. Hy-Tek created their CL2 ("CommLink") file format, which is nearly identical to the SDIF format, but it adds a two digit checksum at the end of every line. It is trivial to read a CL2 file created by Hy-Tek, but it is very difficult to write a valid CL2 file that Hy-Tek will read, because Hy-Tek will not publish the algorithm for that checksum. (There are some who have reverse-engineered that checksum formula.) Hy-Tek then created their HY3 file format, which takes their CL2 format, and goes several steps further. One of the biggest things it does is it makes the checksum algorithm much more complex, such that I'm not sure anyone has successfully reverse-engineered it. So again, it is trivial to read a HY3 file, but it is about impossible to write a HY3 file. USA Swimming also recognized that the SDIF file format was in need of an upgrade, so they developed an XML version of SDIF (I think called XSDIF?). It is a completely open file format, published for anyone to make use of. The downside? Hy-Tek does not support this standard file format published by USA Swimming. So, if you want to do any tinkering with external things to interface or interact with a Hy-Tek product, you basically cannot, unless you enter into some sort of licensing agreement with Hy-Tek. (And note that Hy-Tek is now owned by Active.com, so there is a much larger corporate entity there to try to wrangle with.) So you end up with a software monopoly, but with almost zero third party accessory market because it's impossible to do so. (And yes, I have had this argument many times with the folks at Hy-Tek, and have never gotten very far.) As for the software itself? Meet Manager is rather powerful once you get used to it. Running a swim meet is a complex thing, and there are so so so many different ways to approach it, and so many different approaches that Meet Manager needs to incorporate. -Rick

RE: Opinions - HyTek

bzaks1424 — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:11:07 GMT

It is worth pointing out... just because you don't like the software, doesn't make it acceptable to violate their licensing policy and steal the software. -Rick Come now! Lets not make this a debate on ethics! ;) We have enough of those on these forums!

RE: Opinions - HyTek

bzaks1424 — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:09:25 GMT

What a great idea to have all use the same program ! It must solve a lot of problems! Oz - that really depends: having only one major provider means a consistent interface, BUT also means that you only have innovations, ideas and PRICING coming from one place. As one person put it - $600 just to get their meet up and running. That's a pricey bit - especially when you're paying for software that doesn't even conform to the open standards. Something well within their right as a company to do, but also means they just don't/won't play well with others - thus creating (as mentioned before) a monopoly on the market. So in perspective: you wouldn't want a diesel mechanic working on your Harley would you? Sometimes even though its in a generic sense the right kind of software (in my analogy the mechanic) its not necessarily the best software for what you need it for. :2cents:

RE: Opinions - HyTek

orca1946 — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:53:19 GMT

What a great idea to have all use the same program ! It must solve a lot of problems!

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Betsy — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 04:37:27 GMT

RE: Opinions - HyTek

osterber — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:30:58 GMT

It is worth pointing out... just because you don't like the software, doesn't make it acceptable to violate their licensing policy and steal the software. -Rick

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Jeff Jotz — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:49:52 GMT

I hate HyTek's software. I use HyTek Meet Manager for a small Masters meet every summer, and the software is overly-complex, clunky and not user-friendly. Our local YMCA age group team uses our Masters meet as a fundraiser so I use the YMCA's version of the software, which HyTek has warned me violates its extremely restrictive site license. However, if I had to order my own version of MM plus the confusing array of modules, it would have cost me over $600...which would almost double my meet expense budget! My wife is a HS swim coach and the program has brought her to tears when trying to enter students in a meet with it. I wish that there was a more elegant, easy-to-use and affordable alternative.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:55:06 GMT

I have used Meet Manager many times - and my wife has run Team Manager and Meet Manager for many years supporting the high school team. My personal opinion, as both a person in the software business for 25 years and as an end user is that HyTek software is overall highly complex and a jumbled mess of features. They do not have any meaningful competition and the buyers (teams and swimming pool owners/managers) are unwilling to take the risk of switching to something else. Hy-tek guards its file formats so it is difficult to build software compatible with it. It has nothing to do with Windows or Linux or the platform. It is just not very friendly. Yes you can learn it and get good with it. In fact that is what you MUST do to use it effectively. A startover is required to meaningfully improve it - but it would scare everyone to death that relies on it. Running a meet is complex. The variety of event orders, seeding choices, scoring methods, etc. make it difficult to do easily with software.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Former Member — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:10:17 GMT

I have used their software for over a decade, mostly for USAS but also for High School, NCAA dual meets, YMCA age group city champs and a USMS zone championship. I have attended clinics and have taught a few on Meet Manager. That software dates back to the early DOS pre-Windows days and some legacy file formats still need to be recognized. The greatest feature is how well the swim meet software "suite" imports and exports files. Data management dramatically improved. The reason the software seems so complex is because there are so many different ways to structure and run a meet. Each of the organizations listed above will have their quirks; and that doesn't even touch the international differences outside the US. Still, it seems each season one of our LSC meet hosts will come up with some funky novel meet format that is a challenge to set up with Meet Manager without undue manual workarounds. HyTek listens and the product is active and growing, with features the users have asked for and fill a need. I'd rather gain some level of expertise with one piece of software that supports all these organizations rather than be barely competant with separate software for each organization. The new computer operators who have the most trouble are those who have never volunteered at a swim meet before (clerk of course, runner, meet director). We encourage apprenticing for several meet sessions, then take the hot seat under supervision for a few sessions before going solo. Attendance at an annual training course is required before teams can bid to host a meet. Even so, the LSC usually does the meet setup for the host to avoid troubleshooting errors on the pool deck. Most age group meets are semi-organized chaos trying to handle hundreds of late entries and deck-seeded events. So yes, I am a fan of HyTek. I've looked at other vendor's programs and wasn't terribly impressed. PHP/MySQL and XML are great internet technologies. I've been developing with those for many years including some swim custom applications. I'll opine that they are not appropriate for meet management software. Internet connectivity isn't available at many pools in my area nor would I want to rely on it to keep a meet going.

RE: Opinions - HyTek

orca1946 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 04:35:24 GMT

Has some one contacted Hytec to have them work on an easier program for Masters?

RE: Opinions - HyTek

Betsy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:57:07 GMT

I love using Hy-Tek. It is very easy to run Masters meets with it. The secret is in getting the set-up correct. The year I added relays, I couldn't get it to recognize the relays ages. I emailed Hy-Tek and got a very quick response. I had set the ages at 18-99, which works for individual events, but not for 120+ or 200+ relays. Once I set them up correctly as Open, all has worked well. The hardest part at getting used to Hy-Tek is learning which function to use. Sometimes I know it will do something, but can't remember how. The Help screens are useful. I have operated Meet Manager for high school, USA-Swimming, and Masters. I love it!

RE: Opinions - HyTek

bzaks1424 — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 02:12:59 GMT

Just curious to know what everyones opinion is about this software. I for one am not a big fan of it - it doesnt seem to be very friendly towards masters events (although this might be premature) How come a company or someone has not developed an web based application that utilizes SQL/Php or XML? I'm a developer (well, at least I play one on TV) for another company - but I have greatly considered HyTek and what kind of project would be necessary to really write that application well. Which specific aspect of HyTek are you talking about? When I was in college (2003-2007) we used HyTek to run the meet, AND keep the times (oof). It was not well suited for it, and disappointment and frustration often ensued. Thankfully - I was really good at coaxing some love out of HyTek. As of late, I helped run our team's local meet on October 24th. We had the Colorado console and used that to "push" data to HyTek. That was a FAR better experience. The console is VERY responsive and is a straight linux system whose sole job is timing. Not a windows machine with HyTek on it. If you're talking about the standard HyTek user interface for meet manager. I think its slightly more difficult because you have so many things that need to be done and finding a graceful interface that doesn't require a lot of training time on (especially as people are already used to their product after so many years) would be insanely difficult. So please - share your thoughts. Perhaps if the right people are looking - maybe something good can come out of this conversation.