CDSS Release Notes

Version 2.01e issued 25 April 2007.

Patches for previous release:

• Results Import did not work for clean install, or on first import/export - fixed.
• Horse Name entry screen tidied up and additional/improved messages
• Operation Manual updated to include instructions on Horse Names screen

Version 2.01d issued 21 April 2007.

Next release after use at 2007 Australian Championships:

• Results Import/Export. Distribute and receive full event details file XML files.
• Presentation/Dressage data entry not registering 'E' - fixed
• Competition A Detail Report - not showing Scratchings, and now sorting on Place order
• Marathon Detail Report - re-alignment of MO3/MO4 times, and now sorting on place order
• Competition Summary report not showing 'R', 'E' etc - fixed and now sorting on place order
• Network database capability restored. (accidently blocked with release v2)

Version 2.01b issued 13 March 2006.

Minor update after test run at Vic Champs:

• Competition Summary Report - not displaying overall placings unless all competitions started
• Competition Summary Report - changed "Sponsored By" text to "Sponsor" to give sponsor name more room.

Version 2.01a issued 4 March 2006.

This is a re-compile to avoid the "out of memory" error. A combination of RAM > 512mb, the Windows O/S and the legacy Software Development Kit (SDK) being used, caused this error to occur. To overcome this, the SDK has been upgraded to recompile the program. The program is otherwise the same.

You should uninstall version 2.00x, then install the new v2.01a. After the uninstall of 2.00x, you will still have the directory c:\cdss\cdss2 present, and in that directory there should be 2 files: cde2.mdb and cde_rslt2.mdb. Please leave these - they are your database files. If you have cdss2.exe, then rename it to cde200c.exe (you can delete it after the upgrade).

Version 2.00c issued 11 September 2005.

Very minor updates to reports after first run at an event:

• Section Summary report renamed as Competition Summary Report.
• Marathon Detail report not reporting Elimination in Section E column
• Cones Detail report not showing Eliminated in Course penalties column
• Competitor Times report truncating event location
• Club and State Team reports "look and feel" updated to match other reports.

Significant Upgrade for 2005 rule changes. The amount of differences in the rules dictates that this version is effectively a new program. This means that versions 1.x are not upgraded. You can still keep the old version for historical purposes, but the new version does not carry over the old results. Some key aspects of this release are:

• MO times are now summed to calculate one penalty score. Times are recorded to 1/100ths of a second.
• Cones time penalties now calcuated at .005pts per 1/100th of a second
• Cones knock-downs are now 3pts per cone
• All scores are calculated to 2 decimal places
• Competitors that are eliminated, disqualified or retire, are not given a place or score
• New or updated detail reports for each competition phase - A, B and C. New or updated Summary reports

Version 1.6f issued 15 March 2005.

A few minor bug fixes after the 2005 Vic titles

• Could not access Admin function - invalid directory used.
• Class name would abend if description too long
• Teams entry cleaned and tightened up

Version 1.6e issued 1 August 2004.

I was a bit hasty in releasing. This addresses a couple of bug fixes

• New installation could not add the first event.
• Marathon Times Screen was basically a disaster. It now operates as it is supposed to (add, update etc).
• Bug in Competitor Screen would not permit update
• Tabbing in Competitor Individual Score screen improved - goes to first field when a tab selected (eg Cones or MO).

Version 1.6b issued July 2004.

Well it has been a long time between drinks, Finally I have resurrected the scoring system and put some effort into it. Work on this release stop/started many times over a few years. In this release:

• New screen and report for defining the horses of each competitor.
• New colour interface - the grey is gone and a horrible puke mustard is the go.
• Standardised Save/Clear/Delete/Exit command buttons on all screens
• For event definition, no need to enter event id or short name. The name of the event must therefore be unique. Alos the ability to select whether Sect E times include/exclude MO times is not diabled. This feature was never really utilised and probably caused more problems that it was worth. You will still see the options, but not able to select. From now on the default is that MO times are include in Sect E.
• All Events with a Section E will have the minimum time automatically selected as all events now are assumed to have the 3 minute window. The option button is still visible in the Class Definition screen, but can not be updated. This is shown purely for historical reasons, ie. display of old events.
• General clean up of bugs noticed in my travels.
• Started on the import/export feature, but as it is not finished you will see the disabled interface on the System Administration page.

Andrew Nankivell gave it a top shelf work-out at the Australian Champs (Numurkah April 22-24). As a result of this event, the following items have been addressed:

• You couldn't delete a Club Team.  This has been fixed.
• All reports have been tidied up futher, with standardisation of fonts to Times New Roman, Arial and Arial Narrow (this should ensure better compatibility across the range of PCs that use the software).
• Changing the default Cones Time didn't cascade through to Classes and Competitors. This happened if you left the Default Cones Time blank when you first entered the Event, and then went back and added one at a later time. This has been fixed.
• Identification and patching of an obscure bug.  If you retired a competitor who didn't start, then withdrew the retirement and then entered as a scratching, the progam abended when trying to produce any report of results.  Obviously not many people do this! This has been patched.
• In the Individual Score screen, if you entered a Section Start Time without a Section End Time, the program would issue an error message that the Start Time was later than the Finish Time, and not accept the data entry.  This has been rectified.
• In the Individual Score screen, if you tried to delete a MO Time by blanking it out, it would fail to delete that time. Same with a held time.  This has been rectified.

Many thanks to John Fischer and Elton Chapman (or should that be Elton John) for spotting some buggy things with v1.5b.  Actually they have been there for awhile. The following bugs have been rectified

• The Competitor Times Report was sometimes incorrectly reporting the Mininum and Allowed Times for Marathon Sections.  It only happened when the seconds portion of the time was greater than 29.  So as most events run Allowed Times to the minute, the problem was not evident.
• If you typed an apostrophe into the Title of an Event, the program crashed when you attempted to select the event on restarting CDSS.  This apostrophe bug was also a problem with a few other areas - Class Name and Team Name
• You couldn't update the name of a Team after it had been entered.

After running v1.5a at a few events, I have found few minor things that weren't to my satisfcation.  So here is a bit of a clean-up:

• The new 'Score by Section' - where you enter all Start/Finish Times for a Competitor, working off the Competitor Card, was not ideal.  It wasn't giving a message upon a successful update, and wasn't clearing the screen completely for a new Competitor.  This has now been addressed.
• The Marathon/Cones Data Entry Screen would abend if you tried to enter a score but didn't fully select the option buttons.  This has now been fixed up so that it will prompt for full qualification before trying to process a score.
• In the 'Score by Individual' screen, the Dressage Score frame has been enhanced to show Maximum Score and Basic Penalty Score before Errors of Course are added.   This is to assist where the co-efficient is applied (when Maximum Score is greater than 160), as the resultant penalty score is not obvious!  The co-efficient is displayed under the frame.

This is a big over-haul, with a lot of it beneath the skin. The work you don't see is part of preparation for version 2 where the architecture has to change to do a lot of the things I want the application to do.  Anyway the changes are:

• It is now networkable.  If you can connect 2 or more computers then away you go.  You can specify which database you wish to update, so if 2 or more PCs are pointing to the same database then multiple data entry is a goer.  We used 2 PCs for Equitana, and with nearly 100 competitors it made things much easier.  If you are technically inclined, the database has been split into two - the original (CDE.mdb) stores the raw info, while CDE_RSLT.mdb is introduced as each user's results source for reports.
• New 'Admin' screen (accessed from Main panel) to select network/standalone mode, and database location.
• The Competitor Raw Score Entry/Display screen has been completely re-designed.   It now consists of 4 tabbed panels with detailed display of the times/points and calculated penalties entered for each competitor.  This is to help resolve queries or protests.
• Hot Keys have been introduced in most screens to help with navigating.   The F11 key is equivalent to the 'Previous' button while F12 is the equivalent of the 'Next' button.  F3 is 'End', F9 is 'Clear' and Shift/Del is 'Delete'.  Try to become familiar with them, as it can make manipulation much quicker.
• Most screens now have drop-down lists to select options from.
• The allocation of Competitors to Teams is now via the Teams screen.   Selection is from a list of Competitors not in a team, which are then moved to a list of Competitors in a given team.
• New screen to enter all Marathon Section Start/Finish times for a competitor.
• In the Mrthn/Cones Data Entry screen, Held Time and Penalty is available only for Marathon Section Start, not for Marathon Section Finish. This is because there is only one such field in the database for each Section, and having it enterable for both the Start and Finish made it possible to over-write previously entered data.  I intend to remove this restriction with a later release.
• The limitation on the number of Classes has been removed (previously 30).   The last limitations are the number of Competitors (currently 200 per event) and Marathon Times (30 per event).   Although we never come close to these, it is preferable not to be constrained by them.
• A HTML text-only version of the manual replaces the previous Word 6 document.  This is much smaller in size and I have now included on this site - see nav bar on home page.

Thanks to John Fischer for giving it a thrashing at the Gidley event.   He found the following problems, which have been patched for this release:

• Program crashed when attempting to add a Team
• Program crashed if you tried to access the '%Complete' screens for Presentation/Dressage if you only had Dressage defined for the Event
• Did not display Dressage Score entry fields in the Presentation/Dressage Bulk Data Entry screen if you only had Dressage defined for the Event.  It then crashed if you hit the 'Enter' key.

This is an interim release which enables the handling of FEI classes within the same event as non-FEI classes. The ability to define FEI is via the Class Definition Screen.  This is not the design methodology for release 2, but is the quickest way to produce this capability in the short term.  Changes to this release are:

Operating System and Hardware Requirements

To enable future development of new features (with some in this release), the software development tool (to build the application) has been upgraded.   As such it has been decided to make it Windows 95/998/NT only to allow for features that are not available with WIndows 3.x.  This has unfortunately resulted in an increased amount of data to be downloaded to install.  I will be trying hard to reduce this, or at worst not let it get any bigger.  This has come about as I have merely migrated the existing application from the WIndows 3.x development toolkit with little tuning for W95/98. Emphasis has been on enabling the software for FEI.
Hardware requirements should be whatever you can run Windows 95/98/NT on. As a minimum you would need a high-end 486 with 16mb of RAM.  Preferable is a Pentium or higher with 32mb of RAM.  The more power the better it will run. If you are still on Windows 3.x, there is v1.3 still available.

Database Change

The database (cde.mdb) will be upgraded from MS-Access v1.1 to MS-Access 95.  This will include the addition of some extra fields in the Class_Defn table to hold the FEI indicators.  It will still reside in the 'c:\cdss' directory.

Class Definition/Maintenance Screen

• Options for the defining of FEI Class features. This includes options to indicate Section E Minimum Time (3 minutes less than the allowed time)and the embedding of Presentation Score in the Dressage Score. You can also specify the maximum points and the number of judges for the Dressage. Setting of any of these options will over-ride the Event Specification for that class. Note: Any Dressage Maximum Score greater than 160, has a coefficient factor applied to reduce the impact of the Dressage score in relation to the rest of the event (FEI Article 928 paragraph 7)
• Grouping of Classes on Reports: Also new to the Class Definition screen is a ‘Page Number’ field. You can group classes to appear on a given page. This can prevent the situation where class is split by a page break. It can also allow you to group classes that are not in numeric order – eg, Novice classes on one or more pages.

New Reports:

• Large Display (spread over 2 A4 sheets to make the size of an A3). As A4 printers are common, but to fit the detail results on to one sheet makes for tiny print, this effectively doubles the size of the ‘Full Results’ report. It comes in 2 parts (a left and right hand side), and requires a bit of skill with stick-tape and scissors to put them together, but provides a much more readable score sheet for posting.
• Competition A Detail: This lists the raw scores for 1 Presentation Judge, and up to 5 Dressage Judges. This will show the discrepancy between Judges, so make sure the organisers are happy to have this one posted!

Competitor Definition:  You can now select the Class from a drop down list (the same as for Marathon Times). This will hopefully aid in selecting classes. To save time, if you know the class number you can still just enter that class number instead of clicking on the drop-down list.

Marathon Times: You will see a minimum time for Section E, but this will only be applicable to classes that have a Section E minimum Time

Presentation/Dressage Bulk Entry: The number of Dressage Judge text boxes displayed will be for the largest number of Dressage Judges nominated for any class. If Class 1 has 2 judges and Class 2 has 3 judges, you will see 3 judge text boxes for Dressage data entry for all competitors. If you enter 3 scores for Class 1 competitors, the 3^rd score will be ignored. If you only enter 2 scores for a Class 2 competitor, the screen will note an error, and prompt you for an additional score.

General Notes

Affect of Competitor Status on Percent Complete.  Sometimes the Percent Complete calculations may appear incorrect. The calculations have been based on the following principles, so if you follow them then the calculations may make more sense:

• Scratched – Only for competitors who never start an event – such competitors do not figure in the percent complete calculation
• Eliminated – A competitor is expected to continue in a Competition Phase, and hence the calculations looking for subsequent scores. Eg: if a competitor is eliminated in MO2, the program will look for scores for later MOs and to finish Section E
• Retired/Disqualified – A competitor is not expected to finish the Competition Phase. Eg: if a competitor retires in MO2, the program will look NOT for scores for later MOs or the finish of Section E.

Affect of Competitor Status on Placings:  If a competitor is eliminated, retired or disqualified, they will receive the worse legal score in their class, plus 25% of that score. If more than one competitor falls into this category, a higher placing shall be given to those eliminated, then retired then disqualified. Overall placings shall also be awarded on the same basis, so it is possible that a competitor with a better score may have a lower placing.

 Version 1.3i issued 6 July 1999.

Changes to this release are:

• That blasted Marathon Start and Finish Time bug! If I haven't got the thing nailed this time, I'll do a silly dance at the next CDE I go to! With the last release I fixed one problem and created another. Only real world experience tells me that different users have different settings on their computers.

Changes to this release are:

• Improved Percent Completed calculation, (I think I sorted out the problems now).  In the Marathon, a 'Retirement' has to be enetered somewhere to prevent the 'Percent Complete' screens not displaying such a competitor as outstanding.
• In the 'Mrthn/Cones' screen, if you enter an elimination or retirement for an MO, you do not have to enter a time.  Previously you had to enter something.   In many cases, such as turn-over and subsequent retirement, there is no time to enter.
• In the 'Teams' screen, it previously didn't display the members of   teams with a team code of less than 4 characters.  This has now been rectified.  The problem did not affect the calculation and placing of  Teams, but was just a display problem.
• As reported in FAQ section, there is a problem in Windows 95/98 when the AM/PM symbols are set.  It was causing times before midday to be recorded as PM times.  This caused large penalties to be calculated and/or the program to crash.  The actual cause seems to be in the communication between the Operating System and the program (written using a Windows 3.x product), and I suspect it may be a bug in Windows.  The fix will calculate scores correctly even though the times displayed in the Competitors Score screen will show lots of  'PM' times. It is based on the assumption that anytime between 7 and 12 is AM, and any time 12 and less than 7 is PM (it won't work if you drive CDEs in the middle of the night!).

Previous changes to release 1.3g:

• Improved Percent Completed calculation, (thought I had it)
• Short Event Name drop-down list now ordered most recent to oldest, and
• Filling default Presentation & Dressage values when creating a new event (if you left any Pres or Drsg values blank an abend would occur).

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