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Re: RC: RE: Re: Re: wrong horse - mileage credit



At 10:44 AM 5/24/00 -0600, Bob Morris wrote:
>You all have to remember that this sport was started by a bunch of people
>that were intrinsically honest! Then came the rest of the competitors. This
>sport started out with a minimum of rules and has continued to have a
>minimum of rules. Yes, the explanations and nuances of the basic rules have
>expanded with each contravention of the basics.

I'm not sure why we need to question people's honesty.  Doesn't seem to be
the point to me.  Most folks are honest about important stuff, some aren't.
 Just the way the world is.

>If persons were capable of using their AERC registration numbers there would
>be no problem. There is no such thing as uniqueness in horse's names. There
>is in a registration number.

Any time you have users screwing up something in a consistent manner, then
you have a problem with the process. If it were made easier to USE these
numbers, and if there were not so many steps where hand-written information
is passed from user to manager to data entry, then you wouldn't have so
many problems.  Any time someone is asked to transcribe something that
someone else wrote freehand, you're asking for errors.

For example, say there were a web interface for entering ride results.
First it asks me for the member number - if I type it in correctly and it
exists, it pulls up the rider name, and I don't have to type that.  If it
pulls up a rider name that isn't anything like what I have on the ride
card, then I know I typed it in wrong (or maybe they got married) - people
write numbers a lot of different ways.  YOU ALWAYS VALIDATE USER INPUT.
Rule #1 of writing a data entry app.  If no member number is supplied, I
then can search on the rider name - see if that rider has shown up before.
Next, we move on to the horse.  Enter the number, a full horse name and
owner name pops up - looks the same - great - I only had to type a few
numbers.  Nothing comes up, I've got an error.

If you did proper validation checking when entering data into the database,
you  wouldn't end up with so much junk in the database.  A little extra
programming saves days worth of database cleanup.  A lot easier to just
program it right in the first place than whine about human error, which is
always just going to happen, esp. when you make it easy for people to screw
up.


David LeBlanc
dleblanc@mindspring.com



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