wp-SwimTeam

I posted wp-SwimTeam v0.1.418 late tonight to the download page.  This update fixes a minor problem with SDIF generation of the roster.  In certain instances the first name field would be empty.

Yesterday I completed the first pass of exporting a LSC Registration Pyramid SDIF file.  Since I only have the demo versions of the Hy-Tek tools (Team Manager and Meet Manager), I sent the SDIF file to the support contact I have been working with at Hy-Tek.  Meet Manager can’t read the file which makes sense because it contains roster information, not meet entries.  Team Manager can’t read it either because it doesn’t import SDIF.  Great.  It turns out Hy-Tek really only supports a subset of SDIF.  Now what do I do?

When I first started looking into this problem, I found a couple other similar applications which manage swim team rosters and meets.  One was from EasyWare, the other from WinSwim.  I tried to import the data into WinSwim and didn’t have much luck.  I then sent the file to their support e-mail address and hoped I had simply made a mistake in my SDIF file.  I got a nice reply stating that WinSwim didn’t support the LSC Registation Pyramid and suggested I structure my file a little differently OR use their ASCII import method.

The ASCII import method didn’t look too difficult but instead of tackling it last night, I played Rock Band with my son.  I am really glad I played Rock Band instead of working ont he plugin!  This morning I woke up to an e-mail asking me to download and try a new version of WinSwim which support the LSC registration pyramid.  Yeah!  I installed it and imported my sample data without any issues.  How cool is that?  Unless I run into a problem, I expect our  team will make an investment in WinSwim instead of Hy-Tek.

Today I finished the first pass on generating an SDIF file for the roster.  I sent it to Hy-Tek and it doesn’t import.  Great.  Apparently they don’t seem to support all of the SDIF specification, just some of it.  No mention of that anywhere on their web site.

On the plus side, I found a better version of the SDIF specification on the WinSwim web site.  If I can get WinSwim to digest the SDIF file I generated, I may push our team to use it.

I have been trading e-mail with a support guy at Hy-Tek regading Team Manager’s ability to import SDIF.  After our dialog, I am not sure Team Manager can import the roster I am trying to generate.  It can import results but based on the samples Hy-Tek sent me, it isn’t clear if it will deal with the D1 and D2 records or not.  Since they won’t send me an evaluation version, only the Lite version which doesn’t support SDIF import, I have to sending them my SDIF file for them to import and see what I get back.

I am also looking at WinSwim which actually looks like a better solution for most club swim teams.  WinSwim also offers a really useful SDIF Checker which will help me out greatly.  Using the checker, I should be able to send Hy-Tek what I believe is a good SDIF file.

It really boggles my mind that Hy-Tek is the defacto standard when their tool is so hard to use and to get data in and out of.  Convincing our team that WinSwim may be a better choice for us will be no small feat.

I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the plugin but got back to it last night and am really trying to get the roster export completed.  It isn’t hard but it is tedious as there is lots of data to output in the SDIF format.  I am close to being done and found an inconsistency with the D1 record.  It allocates 12 characters for the USS# field however the USS# field is 14 characters long.  Since it looks like it is only mandatory for submitting data to USS, I may omit it.  I also sent an e-mail to Hy-Tek to see how they handle it, we’ll see if they respond.  For now I think I will omit it and move on.  I need a copy of Team Manager to test with – that is my next dilema.

Last night I completed the initial PHP include file for SDIF support.  As I mentioned previously, I thought it would take a while and it did.  The upside is taking the time to go through the specification to create all the PHP constants has made me more familiar with SDIF.  I don’t think it will be too hard to generate SDIF from the registration information the plugin already collects however, there are parts of the plugin which will need some additions.  For example – the SDIF team records (there are two of them) require detail which wasn’t collected previously and the swimmer records prefer to have the middle name because the USA Swimming Id is constructed from portions of the swimmer’s first, middle, and last names along with their birthdate.  Looks like to me like you can still end up with conflicts but that is  what the specification outlines.  So now off to enhance the team and swimmer forms.

This evening I have been working on generating SDIF but before I can generate it, I need to define all of the constants necessary to constuct the records.  I won’t get it done tonight but I made a big dent in it.  To define all of the possible record types I will probably end up with about 750 constants.  This is incredibly tedious work – necessary, but tedious.