Announcing FenceDB

[veeco]

Hi everyone,

I have been rather quiet in the last couple of days on this board, and that is because I am currently working on a project of mine.

This actually was started last week when I had a discussion on another French forum on fencing about fencing software. Basically people were saying that there should be more information about fencing tournament results available.

Some tournament hosts and websites have started to display results from the actual bouts that took place in the pools and in the DE rounds. With this it is possible to see who lost to who, and who beat who. This kind of information allows to make some crude statistics about matchups (i.e. how many times did 2 fencers meet in the last x months, what were the outcomes of those bouts, etc.)

The only problem is that these efforts are not quite as frequent as we would hope.

So I set out to create a database of fencing results. This would be a central place where one can upload fencing results (in the form of EnGarde files, or whatever software you use). Other people would then be able to navigate that data from a web interface, kind of like what this site http://www.chessgames.com/ does for chess. One could browse through all the fencers in the list, see who they fenced against, what their tournament results were, and maybe even see a picture of their favorite fencing star ;-).

Anyway, I have started working on this and I wanted to let you guys know what I was up to. Right now there is not much in terms of end user UI that you can see, but I have written some code and have a database full of results from the men's epee FIE results. The only thing is, since the UI isn't there, you will have to trust my word ;-). If you are a rather technical person you can take a look at http://fencedb.sourceforge.net which is the homepage of this project on SourceForge. All the code will be available for free since I am developing this under an Open Source licence.

If you have some time, drop me a line here to let me know what you think about this idea and what could make it even cooler (if that's an option).

Thanks!

[Dragonfly]

Veeco, this is already totally cool!

[DJ Apostrophe]

Veeco,

I'm glad to see this happening. Its been one of those things that myself and Adam Blake (my fellow New England division tournament organizer type) have been talking about doing something similar to this forever. Its nice to see someone doing it. Let me know if I can be of any help (wether for sample data, programming thoughts, etc.)

-w
p.s. if you want to get in touch with adam for any ideas, feel free to e-mail him adamNO@SPAMprisedefer.com (remove the NO SPAM)

[Artisan]

I would love to see (in the "my lifetime" future) a NAC or other big tournament where refs score bouts on wireless pda's. Have a Digital projector scroll through Strip results on a big wall, real time or near real time. It would just mean getting the right sponsor... (not intending to restart the fencing & TV thread)

[Craig]

Very Cool! I could really use that type of content for writing up previews of world cups and such.

Craig

[DJ Apostrophe]

In response to Artisan: Something similar will be going on at this year's Pomme de Terre. We will have two (or three) lcd projectors, projecting everything on the wall, pool results, rankings, placements, etc. No more hunkering around one sheet of paper taped to the wall
-w

[graphixaddict]

this sounds really cool cant wait to try it out, if you need any data collection done or GUI designed let me know.
Graphix

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally posted by DJ Apostrophe
In response to Artisan: Something similar will be going on at this year's Pomme de Terre. We will have two (or three) lcd projectors, projecting everything on the wall, pool results, rankings, placements, etc. No more hunkering around one sheet of paper taped to the wall
-w

problem--


the nearsighted people??

(i'm nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, so i'm fine.... besides my total lack of 'normal' depth perception.... )

[DJ Apostrophe]

with you it doesn't matter, you'll weasel yourself behind the bout table anyway...

and if you cant read what pool your in off a screen that is 15 feet tall I feel really bad for you.

-w

[MyrddinsPrecint]

if i close my left eye, i only have my nearsighted eye. i start getting fuzzy about a foot and a half away from my face.... it's really really bad, for someone my age anyway. i'll just read it with my left eye, and all will be good.

i only weasel my way into the hearts of bout committee when there's someone cool there... you, kyle, linda merrit...

and i wasn't talking about me, i was talking about all the old fencers that can't see....

[DJ Apostrophe]

I think anyone who can't see would prefer a 15 ft tall screen rather than a 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper... though I could be wrong... comments from those with corrective lenses?
-w

[veeco]

Here is the list of fencers, to give you an idea:

http://veeco.is-a-geek.com:8080/fenc...listFencers.do

Of course, this is still very minimal and the UI looks bad. I don't claim to have enough of an artistic flair to be able to create good looking pages. So if one of you guys feels like working on this, let me know. Don't click on any link on the page, they aren't hooked up to anything yet.
When they will be, you clicking on them will take you to a details page where you can see details about the fencer you selected, including results from this year's competition. Sort of the same thing than what the FIE page does, except that you can do it on a per fencer level.

Disclaimer: if the URL above doesn't work, let me know, but be warned that this is running of of my personal machine which is behind a flaky DSL line. So connection might be down at some times, and it might just be that I brought down the program to make some changes to it. There is also no paging on the page, so you get to see all the fencers (there are more than 1100 of them) on the same page. So it might take a while to load, esp. if everyone decides to try it at the same time ;-)

[veeco]

The fencer detail page is now working, with a list of all the competition and placements for that fencer in the year.

Clicking on the competition will give you nothing. Nada. That's what I will try to work on next night. I need to go to bed now.

URL is above, and for the lazy ones who don't want to scroll up, it's down here:

http://veeco.is-a-geek.com:8080/fenc...listFencers.do

Thanks!

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Wayne, corrective lens right here, real bad prescription, 4.75. Anyhow, I love the idea, 15 feet is a definite plus. Especially last year when the sheets were in a little corner/hallway deal, right near the entrance.

Plus Veeco very cool website.