Status of On-line Databases
Here are the results of my (Mel Dyck) experiments with the USMS.org web site databases.
I found the database at usms.org on the left side of the opening page under the heading 'Competition'. Here there are seven options: Results.net, Nationals, Records, Top Ten, All Americans, Top Times, Meet Results. I tried them all with the following experiences:
[1] Results.net
This is just a list of master's meet results submitted by interested parties. It is not complete and it links the reader to varied format results on other sites.
[2] Nationals
Just a list of results from nationals from 1994 to the present in a few different formats.
[3] Records
Here the visitor can search by individual name. I had mixed results with this. First of all there is no capability to look for associations with LMSC, club, team -- whatever. I tried Ron Johnson, one of Arizona's major record holders. Under LCM I got the message 'Sorry, but no records were found using your search parameters' when I entered Ron Johnson or Ronald L. Johnson. However, when I entered Ronald Johnson, the search returned 5 records.
Under SCM, I got the 'Sorry...' message when I search for Ronald Johnson but got 4 records when I entered Ron Johnson.
For Max von Isser the search was a bit more forgiving. I got his results when I entered Max von Isser or just 'sser'.
The results all came up in an html-display table that would not be convenient for use with other programs. However, there is also a 'Plain text file' option and this fills the screen with all the records for a particular course. These may be saved as ASCII text files easily and improted into Excel (for example) using a 'fixed-width' option. The result produced a pleasing display in the spreadsheet that could be re-ordered conveniently. However, still no association with LMSC and the like, so the user would have to keep in mind his swimmer's names if he were looking for a complete list for some restricted region or team.
[4] Top Ten
This is a hot link to 'swimgold'
[5] All Americans
Under 'Individual All American Listings' there is a hot link to the 'swimgold' site.
Under '2000 Relay All American Listings' I was transferred to a list on an HTML page that does include team name. I saved the page as a text file and imported it into Excel with a less satisfactory display than for the 'Records' file mentioned above. Maybe I could have cleaned this up a bit with some playing around but I haven't yet tried. The result could still have been re-ordered by region or team or swimmers name, so it was still useful.
[6] Top Times
Here the visitor can search top swim times in all 3 courses. The database at present is quite limited and mostly includes results from nationals. However it is capable of displaying up to 500 swims from the selection menu, so length is not a problem. The default save option is as an HTML file but I chose the text alternative on the 'Save As' menu. I was able to open the result as a very neat file in Excel.
[7] Meet Results
a) Search for individual swimmers results
Typing in a name yields results from nationals. These can be saved as a 'csv' file that is easily opened in Excel to produce a nice result for an individual swimmer.
b) Search for club results
Here, I entered ARIZ and the search returned 117 swimmer names in a table with hot links to the individual records. Each could then be saved as a 'csv' file. However, I didn't see any way to save them all together. This means that I would have to concatenate them in the spreadsheet later if I wanted to see them as a group.
Sorry to be so long-winded. Hope this answers some of your questions. If it does not, please let me know what else you might want.
Mel Dyck, Arizona LMSC
