Thank you for your interest in processing WMOA League results.  I hope the following answers some of your questions;  please contact me if you have any more. 

 

I inherited a set of QBasic programs which did the job but were beyond my skills to maintain;  I now have an Access database that does the number crunching (primarily the algorithm for allocating points) but needs some intervention before and after, as follows:

 

• First stage is to manipulate the results files into a standard format.  I capture the data from whatever format it is published in and use Excel to tidy it up.  In particular time formats need tidying and names need to be split into forename / surname.  Organisers will sometimes send files if asked which can save time.
• Next, strip out the non eligible competitors by club.  This is not quite as easy as it sounds – UWOC runners are OD, BUOC runners are HOC (unless they are BO members for another club…) and there are numerous school affiliations.  BAOC and RAFO competitors may also be WMOA club members.
• I now import the data into Access and match the runners from the new event with existing competitors.  Fairly straight forward apart from numerous Andy / Andrew etc mismatches, and age category changes at the start of the year.
• Number crunching is the automated bit (it decides what age category you are running in, allocates the 100 or 80 point scores and all the others, then calculates the best 5 scores per competitor and the highest scores for the club tables) and Access produces tables of club counters and individual scores.  In theory it can produce html directly from these but my version plays up at this stage!
• Instead, I export to Excel again, tidy up the formatting, save as html and upload to the internet.  These files are currently held in my aol area.
• Finally, I change the “static text” part of the League home page and send this to the webmaster for uploading.

 

It would be possible, but very time-consuming, to do the whole thing manually.  I did have a spreadsheet that calculated points, but it needed a lot of manual intervention.  The Access database is not a polished production and it is quite possible that anyone taking on this task will need to program it for themselves.  One further note of caution – the WMOA committee plan to re-introduce regional events into the League, which will mean mapping the age classes and the junior ageless classes back to the colour coded courses.