Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Horse and Rider records in the On-line Archives

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 21:57:51 -0700, Michael Maul <mmaul@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

...
>That said - there are inaccuracies and missing portions in 
>the data for the endurance rides listed from 1985 to 1995. 
>Russ Humphrey, Bob Morris, and I spent a year trying to get 
>the data out of the old software that the office used until 
>1995.  It was written in 1984 by Joe Long in a computer 
>language that no one on earth today understands - including 
>Joe - I believe.

Yep.

When we set this up in 1984, the job really called for a minicomputer
(PC's were exteremely limited in power and capacity compared to today)
but the AERC didn't have that kind of money.  We asked more of the
system than it could really deliver.  We made a lot of compromises due
to the limitations of the hardware that came back to bite us.

Although, the errors in the data were mostly data-entry errors --
incorrect ride results or misentered information.  Alas, the system
lacked means of checking/verifying this kind of thing.  And, I made
the unfortunate decision in 1984 to not require riders to carry cards
and present rider and horse ID numbers at rides; I didn't think that
would go down well with the members at that time.  So there were a lot
of spelling errors on horse names, resulting in multiple records for
what was the same horse.  Even cases of a horse being reported by his
registered name at one ride, and his nickname at another ... two
records.  A real mess.

Also, the database software used a method not used today, of
"multi-value fields," that made conversion of the data far more
difficult than it would otherwise have been.

I regret that I wasn't any help to Bob, Russ and Mike in the
conversion.  Frankly, by 1996 I'd burned out on it, and never looked
at Revelation software again.

-- 

Joe Long
jlong@xxxxxxxx
http://www.rnbw.com


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