EHM The Blue Line

I thought I'd start a new thread about this so as not to interrupt the discussion around who will be researching what:

I seem to remember reading somewhere (probably in the Researchers Needed thread) Jatahati explaining that there would be an online form to upload the researched data.

Personally, I would strongly recommend that everybody collate their research in spreadsheets (i.e. Excel or OpenOffice Spreadsheet). By using spreadsheets we can work on the data offline, modify/update/finalise the data, share it with other users (so several users could work on the same area and then merge their work), etc. If you're using something like phpmyadmin (like we use on TBL) then you can import CSV files straight into your SQL database.

I think that an online form is going to slow the research down. Users are probably going to initially put their research into a spreadsheet anyway. They would then have to re-enter the data in the online form.

I thought I'd just share this because I feel it would save one hell of a lot of time. For example, with the Challenge stats (prior to the Stats Upload Tool) I used to type them in manually into the database; but for the past few seasons I've been importing the data using CSV files - it is significantly quicker and easier to import data.

archibalduk wrote:I thought I'd start a new thread about this so as not to interrupt the discussion around who will be researching what:

I seem to remember reading somewhere (probably in the Researchers Needed thread) Jatahati explaining that there would be an online form to upload the researched data.

Personally, I would strongly recommend that everybody collate their research in spreadsheets (i.e. Excel or OpenOffice Spreadsheet). By using spreadsheets we can work on the data offline, modify/update/finalise the data, share it with other users (so several users could work on the same area and then merge their work), etc. If you're using something like phpmyadmin (like we use on TBL) then you can import CSV files straight into your SQL database.

I think that an online form is going to slow the research down. Users are probably going to initially put their research into a spreadsheet anyway. They would then have to re-enter the data in the online form.

I thought I'd just share this because I feel it would save one hell of a lot of time. For example, with the Challenge stats (prior to the Stats Upload Tool) I used to type them in manually into the database; but for the past few seasons I've been importing the data using CSV files - it is significantly quicker and easier to import data.

When dealing with relational db and CSV files one must handle relations themselves (relations handled with Identifier number rather than any rational name), for example simplified version of Arena table:

Name----------------City----OwnerTeam
Molson Center------74-------234
Prudential Center--66-------122

City table:
Id----Name
74----Monteal
66----Newark
120---Boston

So it will do lot of checking work and I think a lot of typing errors when realtions are targeted manually.

And if one submits info in several tables at the same time it is impossible to know Id:s beforehand so making relations there is impossible.

That's a fair point. However, for things like rosters and player attributes I think it'd be quicker to use CSV files. You can then do a find and replace command to replace any text with the relation ID number before importing it.

Just a suggestion though.