I agree with having all the association lists - Database, SOTAwatch, Website - in the same order, and agree with Andy that ordering by Association Code (prefix) makes the most sense.
I disagree that subdivision is necessary. The list might be long, but it is still very quick, and I would prefer that than clicking through 2 or 3 levels of hierachy.
The ability to correct a single entry without calling up the entire chaser log twice would be most welcome and very much appreciated.
I enter my chaser points manually and in the majority of cases an error is spotted quite quickly, usually because the points credited do not agree with my log entry.
In order to correct this one error I have to call up my chaser log (almost 10,000 entries in my case) and delete the incorrect line. My chaser log is then re-loaded and I can re-type the correct entry.
However, at this stage the data base will not allow me to select “submit chaser entry” and I have to log out of the data base and re-load.
Download a specific activation as CSV is now available. Log in and select Activator Roll of Honour, click “view” on the line for your own call and then from the simple log view, a “download” link will be at the end of the line for each activation. Click this to download only the entries for this specific activation. No spurious fields, all entries in date/time order so the file you download will upload with out the CSV parser barfing.
So now if you have entered a mistake you can click the download link to get just this activation, save it, edit it (text editor or Excel or OpenOffice), delete the current entered activation and upload the file. I’ve tested this with several of my own activations and it worked fine for me.
BEFORE YOU USE IT YOURSELF*****
Download a full copy of your log using the button at the bottom of the page. Just in case!
I have nothing new to add that has not already been covered, so thanks for putting the work into these upgrades.
The feature I would most appreciate is the ability to upload an activator or chaser CSV file contaning all QSO’s with a particular summit on a particular day on different bands without all but the first QSO appearing in the database.
As Phil G4OBK has mentioned it is possible to add individual contacts later, but as I know some QSO’s will be automatically deleted from my activator log I have to choose the QSO I want to appear in the database & only enter that in the CSV file I upload. This will most likely be the most unusual QSO, whichj may not necessarily be the first QSO I have with an activator on a single activation. For example, My first S2S contact a couple of weeks ago with Phil GD4OBK/P on GD/GD-003 was on 60m SSB, but the contact that I want to appear in the database was the 160m CW S2S we had a couple of minutes later, followed very closely by the S2S on 160m SSB.
By only taking the first QSO, the database will also be missing quite a large amount of data realting to similar situations to the above, so any band or mode specific queries will also yield inaccurate results.
I do have a habit of trying to work an activator on as many bands as possible
Thanks again for the upgrade, I can send you a logfile to play with if you need one.
I would just like to thank Andy for his work and say how great it will be not to see things like 11 activators using the 144MHZ mode and 22 activators using the CW band in the stats. Silly, but it really niggled me.
Top of the pops for me would be the ability to edit typos without having to delete the chase entry and re-enter it again or having to download and edit of line a CSV of an activation etcetera.
Singing my praises is something I can never tire of! However, and this is a really big however, the man who deserves all the credit is Gary G0HJQ. He did such a splendid job that I have few problems following his C# code and t-SQL statements. Perhaps if you were aware that I have yet to read any books/manuals on how the C# language or MS ASP.NET works you may be more circumspect in thanking me. So far all I have had to do is set a breakpoint in a likely looking spot in VS C# IDE and run up my local copy of the code and database then poke about and single step the code. That shows what happens currently and bit of tinkering later we have an improved database! Seriously! OK, I’ve been a professional code jockey since 1983 and programming since 1978 which may help a little. I did have to get a book on SQL and ask Gary the odd question though.
In reply to G0VOF:
The feature I would most appreciate is the ability to upload an activator or
chaser CSV file contaning all QSO’s with a particular summit on a particular
day on different bands without all but the first QSO appearing in the
database.
Not being a chaser I only find out chaser issues when people tell me. I don’t think I was aware of this. Anyway it’s fixed as of 28-May-11 12:49:19 UTC. You can enter the same summit/activator/date multiple times as long the band and/or mode is different. Gary’s code already handles the point scoring for duplicates. I just tweaked the duplicate detect conditions to be a bit narrower. A true 5 min fix that one.
In reply to F6ENO:
Abt the file name, is it a serial ID ?
Yes it’s a UID. But don’t rely on it never changing. If you have an activation it will have a UID and if you delete that activation and then re-enter exactly the same data it will get a new UID. There may occasions when I need to clean up or reorder data and in those cases the UIDs for all existing activations may well change. Would you like something else instead? I used it in the filename because I had the user name and this UID already to hand. I could change it to the summit and date if that makes more sense.
No changes to the parser and band stuff yet. Changing that may / can / will break something so I’m in “deep thought” mode still.
Normally I would not dare to bother Andy with another little issue but perhaps it’s also a quick fix. It is a cosmetic error on the AddActivation4 page. Here you get the status
Recorded details of x Activations and y QSOs.
Time to write entry to database = 0.zz seconds
Time to recalculate score = 0.zz seconds
You now have aaa points + b Bonus Points.
Thank you for participating in SOTA.
Did you ever note, the aaa points are false? aaa are the points before the activation not after adding it to the database. While a immediate look into the activator’s log shows the correct score this message astonishes me time after time. But only a few tenths of a second until I remember this fault.
Normally I would not dare to bother Andy with another little issue but perhaps
it’s also a quick fix.
It took me longer to find how to recreate this bug than to fix it!
The points score was correct if you entered via the web interface and wrong on the CSV upload. Fix was nothing more than calculating the points score after the update not before for CSV entered updates. So that’s another easy one done.
The WX is horrible here, wet and windy but it may brighten up after lunch. But I’m still recovering from a late night at a wedding yesterday so at least I can be productive whilst I wake up. Got to say that I’ve never been to a wedding where they have a Raqs sharqi (belly dancer) before. Different!
Would you like
something else instead? I used it in the filename because I had the
user name and this UID already to hand. I could change it to the
summit and date if that makes more sense.
Since downloading an activation should be done to correct an error, the file name is not important, so do not worry about its name, Andy.
Just used the new feature Andy, to correct a typo in a 40 log activation of MW-026 from a few weeks ago. It worked perfectly, and no data was lost!
The ‘Download’ (an activation) feature effectively replaces steps 1, 2 and 3 in my method described above and saves me a few more precious seconds - cheers!
While it made perfect sense for non-scoring contacts with the same summit on the same day to be automatically seen as dupes & deleted from an uploaded log, I suppose it wasn’t envisaged that there would be people like me who like to work an activator on as many bands or modes as possible Hi!
I have a backlog of chaser QSO’s to enter in my Excel chaser log here so this time I will include some “same activation, different band/mode” contacts when I upload the CSV file.
