Quote:
Why do you folks choose to make up your own?


Last March I was asked whether I'd do the stats for the Calif state championship, to be held in August. The only software the MD had was the Access database program that Berryville provides. There were some things about it I really didn't like - like having to insert a new record for each guy's score on each stage. I asked around several clubs (didn't know about this forum at that time) and most people seemed to be using an Excel spreadsheet.

Then I was laid off work (teaching Windows 2000 networking)... for what was presumably to be a few months. So I took some time to do a few things - arthroscopic surgery on knee cartilage I'd torn 25 years ago, getting certified as an NRA instructor...

I thought of trying to modify the Berryville program. But in the 1980s I'd gotten pretty good with a database development system that was poorly marketed and eventually faded from view, called Clarion. The company had changed hands several times since then. I upgraded to the latest version of their development software.

And since then it's been a learning curve. The databases I'd done before were all DOS based. So now I get to deal with MDI threads and all the interface stuff that makes modern software fit on a CD rather than on a floppy. I did take a 3 day class in Vegas a few months back on using Clarion to write client software for Microsoft SQL Server backends... and it was interesting that of the maybe 20 of us there, nobody was under forty years old. As I said... Clarion seems to be an old person's secret :)

As only spotty consulting jobs have materialized in the past few months, I've continued improving the software. My goal is to make it completely accessible to computer-phobic folks, so there are a number of "wizard" procedures for things like defining a match.

So, Ted... long answer (well, explanation ;) ) to a simple question...

Jane