Mike: A minor but annoying point: Your current database format has a slight incompatibility with Swiss-Sys. When importing an unrated player from the database window, “unr.” is inserted in the Ratings field. However, attempting to save the registration gives an error message. If you delete the contents of the Ratings field and save, the program will insert “unr” automatically. (I’m not sure if this is a new development, since until recently there were few current unrateds in the DB and I don’t know if I ever imported one.)
John, this sounds more like a Swis-Sys problem, have you contacted Thad about it?
What version of SS are you on?
6.085. While it is probably true that a fix could be made within Swiss-Sys, this seems to be a problem which you created with recent changes to the database format. “Old” unrated players (lifers whose ratings were not included because they hadn’t played since the 70s) import fine, while “new” unrateds (new members who do not yet have a rating but whom you have added to the monthly supplements) produce an error message. What is probably happening is that you put … something … in the rating field which Swiss-Sys does not recognize. Since the database is more or less useless without a pairing program, isn’t it really up to you to make sure it is compatible with the ones currently in use?
John, as far as I know both the supplement and the gold master format files have the same formatting for the ratings fields as the files produced under the old ratings programming. (However, since nobody in the office could find a copy of the field descriptions for either file, I had to reverse-engineer them both, so I might have missed some infrequent cases.)
I’m inclined to suspect this may be more of a problem with the gold master format than the bi-monthly supplement format, because that’s the more likely source of non-rated players.
Can you give me some specific examples of IDs that don’t import properly?
Player 10016941 (picked at random because I knew him in the 70s) imports correctly. Players 12891830 and 12924481 (new players recently added to the database) give “Error: invalid rating,” and will not confirm until you delete the “unr” in the rating field. I definitely have not installed a replacement copy of the big DB (it would take far too long to download), just updated with the supplements.
(I don’t know if this is related to your issue because I’ve already fixed my version of the database and can’t check those ids.) One problem that I always get with the unrateds (and by that I mean a BLANK in the R_LPB_RAT field) is that they sometimes don’t have a U in the R_PLR_TYP - instead it is E (established) or P (provisional). So every two months when I update the ratings, I switch all these to U. That is to solve a problem with my personal database, but I also haven’t had a problem with Swissys.
Tom, I assume you’re referring to the gold master format, not the bi-monthly format. I’ll have to pull an old gold master to double check that case.
As to John’s problem, I went back and checked the February 2002 supplement files. For players with no regular rating, the R_RATING1 field has all blanks. That’s the same way players with no regular rating are coded in the current supplement file. I’ll have to check with both Thad Suits and Tom Doan to see what they’re expecting to have in that field for an unrated player, but it appears the file format is consistent with the old programming.
I suspect the reason this hasn’t come up before is that historically there haven’t been many players who had a quick rating but no regular rating, though that’s the case for both of the IDs cited by John. (Perhaps that’s less unusual than it used to be due to an increase in quick-only rated events?)
I can’t remember about the gold - though that is probably true for that also (I think they also had provisional ratings for less than 4 games but I can’t swear to that.) I do get E and P for unrated (BLANK rating field) players in the supplement update. I’m sure of that because I have to run a query after every update to correct that - probably 100-200 changes. I’m still using TnmtAdmt.
The reason I think you must be referring to a gold master is the field name.
The field names in the bi-monthly rating supplement file are:
R_MEM_NAME
R_MEM_ID
R_EXP_DATE
R_STATE
R_RATING1
R_RATING2
The fields in the gold master file are:
MEM_ID
MEM_NAME
EXPIRED
STATE
RSUPP_YR
RSUPP_NUM
R_PLR_TYP
R_LPB_RAT
R_NRM_DAT
Q_PLR_TYP
Q_LPB_RAT
Q_NRM_DAT
I was referring to TARATSUP (sp?) which is updated by TnmtAdmt with the new supplement every 2 months. When there is a blank rating field in the updated file, the record isn’t always marked as U type (not sure if it is ever marked as U). This only happens for those with a Quick rating and no Regular rating. I’ve also examined the Quick ratings and those have never needed to be fixed. My guess is that the code is wrong when the Regular rating is blank (maybe carrying over from the value in the previous record updated?) and it wasn’t caught because at the time coded everybody had a regular rating.
I don’t think I’ve looked at Tournament Administrator in a decade, I’m not sure I even have a copy of it anymore.
I need to finish the file specs for both the new combined format rating supplement file, the revised rating report files and perhaps combine the latter with the membership form from TD/A.
I don’t do Windows programming, I’m a UNIX/database guy, but there are several people active in this forum that have been working on either standalone rating report entry programs or full-blown pairing programs.
Thad Suits reports:
Thanks for passing along the message. SwissSys considers blanks as unrated, but your message points out a bug in the program which I was not aware of. When the regular rating is blank but the quick rating is not SwissSys gets confused and reports an error. This is easy to fix, so I don’t think you need to make any changes unless you want to for reasons of your own.