Opinions - HyTek

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!

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

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?

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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!

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.