[CQ-Contest] World Contest Station Database redesign input sought

[Pete Smith]

I applaud Al and Gerry for being willing to take this on.  The server that 
had been supporting the database went flooey back in January, taking with 
it all the ASPs for querying the database (fortunately, not the database 
itself). I lacked the time (and frankly, the ambition) to rebuild the site, 
so I was hoping that someone with more of the requisite skills would take 
it on.  Gerry offered and I sent him the last database itself several 
months ago, as a starting point.

I thought it might be helpful to recount some of my experience with the 
database.  One of the difficulties with it is that it didn't start life as 
a formal database, with nicely-formatted and rigorously structured data - 
originally it was an Excel spreadsheet that K7ZO had built, based on 
reporting on 3830, with free-form data.  I converted it to Access, added 
the on-line query capability and continued the basic structure - free-form 
entries in fields like Towers, 160M antennas, Rigs, Amps, etc.  That let me 
preserve the data K7ZO had painstakingly collected, but at the price of 
making it difficult to query the database in systematic ways.  It also 
didn't help that I'm not an SQL jock, by any stretch of the imagination.

NF4L kindly wrote an updating program that I could use to keep up (more or 
less) with inputs from station owners, which made the manual updating 
process barely tolerable.  I always hesitated to allow updating online in 
real time, because I didn't want to manage passwords for over 3000 stations 
and I was afraid of the potential for mischief if updating wasn't 
controlled in some way.  Frankly, the task of restructuring the database 
and reformatting all the data to make it consistent (changing all the "4el 
yagi" entries to "4-el yagi" and the like) always seemed just too big to 
take on.

I hope this background is useful, and wish them success.

73, Pete  N4ZR

  At 01:33 PM 5/1/2008, Alfred Frugoli wrote:
>Hello fellow contesters.
>
>As you know, the World Contest Station Database that had been maintained by
>N4ZR for many years disappeared recently.  W1VE has generously offered space
>on the getscores.org server to host the WCSD, and I'm going to be working on
>redesigning the database and interface.
>
>My hope is that the database will allow contesters to easily compare their
>station to others in terms of station hardware to determine who their
>"competitors" are.
>
>What I'd like to see at this point is a discussion of ways to compare
>contest stations.  Factors that come to my mind are antennas (height,
>takeoff angle, gain, stacks, fixed antennas for certain directions, etc.),
>receiver performance, receive antennas (only 1 direction, multiple
>directions, etc.), and local noise floor.  Items such as SO2R, High
>Power/Low power and entry class are contest specific and that information is
>already available through the 3830 database.  Are there other factors I'm
>not thinking of?
>
>I look forward to a lively discussion and having a useful tool for
>contesters back on the 'net soon.
>
>If you belong to other reflectors where readers may have input, please feel
>free to forward this e-mail along.
>
>73 de Al, KE1FO
>
>-----
>Visit my amateur radio contesting blog at ke1fo.wordpress.com.
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