web based sailwave?

Imported from Yahoo
21

I’m curious what the “lowest common denominator” is for computing
devices running sailwave today. I know our club has a fairly old 1.8Ghz
machine with about 512MB of RAM. I’m sure that there are even older
machines out there being used for sailwave as well.

Thats a supercomputer! I run it on an Acer EEE under ubuntu, I think
its got 512Mb but I think the processor is only about 6000Mhz - runs
fine.

I see no reason that running a ‘web version’ on a WAMP server shouldn’t
run on these spec of machines. The slow bit about my LAMP (L = linux
instead of Windows) server at home is the network conenction not the
processor in the server which come to think of it is probably also
slower than 1.8GHz, and I doubt it has more than 256Mb in it as the
case hasn’t been opened in 6 years… infact its only been switched off
5 times in 6 years!

WAMP is a 16Mb download. Not small but not stupidly huge. (WAMP is
Apache - a webserver, MySQL a database server, PHP a programming
language) I’d expect it to be possible to supply sailwave complete with
WAMP (several other packages already do this) that would self install
on Windows and all the user would do would be type in
in their browser and they’d see a sailwave
screen? You’d be running your own webserver on the club PC, but it
wouldn’t need to be on the web… You’ll get a faster response than
those running a true web version :wink:
Completely agree the data has to be portable which is the M part of
WAMP - not sure how easy that bit is to achieve, as I dont think you
can just move SQL databases round like that so it’d need a ‘dump’ to
stick and an ‘un-dump’ from stick.

···

http://127.0.0.1/sailwave

22

Marty Bower wrote:

Altho it may be time for sailwave to go a bit more commercial in
operation and function such that it is able to have a simple system as
it is now, along with a more complex web based as I can see clubs that
have 5-6 days a week of races, some weekends with upwards of 4 courses,
200+ boats…so a more complex system might be needed. I am
sure they can afford it too, when you consider ALL of those 200 boats
will be spending 75-150 USD to enter.

I’m not sure what needs to be afforded.� By the sounds of things Colin
was planning a new version of the software which he doesn’t currently
charge for?� There are offers of help from the sailwave community.� It
sounds to me like a blossoming open source project.

You may or may not need a server to run it on.� Depending what the
platform is that could be under �100 a year, and several clubs could
get together and share that!.

If sailwave wasn’t so damned good there would already be a web
alternative!

23

Trevor Mackay wrote:

I think I can 30th that from here in Scotland. Although the club
is
near the centre of Edinburgh we don’t have internet access through our
700MHz Main scoring computer with 190 something of RAM.

If Sailwave has to be rewritten by Colin, possibly with help from
others and don’t give us all the fancy new features everyone seems to
want and this new version won’t show up for 6 months or a year will
that seriously disadvantage many of us currently using the program as
long as the currrent version is still available?

Hi Trevor,

That has been my thinking - we have a working version…

In the current economic climate the 30+ GBP that BT want for a net
connection just to run the scoring program is not an expense I could
justify to the rest of our club committee.

We are in the same boat - after £45 a month on business line we would
need to pay £30 a month for business broadband. We aren’t even sure
it’ll work as we are exactly 5mile from the exchange and 5mile is the
limit. If we had better mobile coverage we’d go to 3G but we can only
just get a signal from one provider for voice calls…

There is one thing I’m not 100% certain of - are people saying that if
they needed the internet (lets assume my assumption that it could run
on a WAMP server is flawed) - if they could enter the results ‘offline’
would they want access to scoring ‘offline’ as well… or are people
more worried about result entry? I’m thinking result entry is not so
hard, but scoring was being described as though it would become a
server side function.

···

Just my 2 pence worth but there it is

Cheers Trevor Mackay

Sailing Secretary
Cramond Boat Club

24

Personally, I think this thread has been very interesting. One of the first things I do when authoring software is try to spend about 80% of my time in defining the problem, and only 20% solving it. :slight_smile:

It would appear from all the feedback that one of the core benefits of Sailwave is its ability to run standalone, which means that functionality would have to be preserved, IMO. I think the lowest common denominator of hardware that I saw was a P75 w/128MB of RAM. I'm not sure that WAMP would be very useful for this.

Colin, would you be willing to consider writing more modular code? If we could break the software down into modular components, it would give us the ability to meet all of the needs, though it would take more work.

For example, I envision a bunch of classes that handle the data objects themselves (eg: Competitors, Boats, Crew, Races, Result, etc) with separate backend interfaces to MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and maybe even an XML or JSON option. (Personally, I think I would like to see JSON as the default datafile type, but I'm not 100% sure of that).

I also envision different classes for "Calculations". Eg, a class which calculates PHRF-TOT, one for IRC, one for PY, etc.

With this layer of abstraction, it would be easier to write "frontends", and there could be one for Windows, one for Mac, one for Linux, one for Web, etc. The software could be distributed as "Source, Windows Exe, MacOS dmg, Linux RPM, etc.". For those that wanted to run "standalone", they could do so, and the files would be saved as JSON files. If you wanted to upload to a WWW site, you could just push the JSON file to the web site, and it could be imported, and/or merged with the online database. If you wanted an online only instance of Sailwave, you could do that, too.

I don't know what language would be best for this. Python, Ruby, and Java all come to mind. All have strengths and drawbacks. There are a lot of libraries available in all of these languages to handle heavy-lifting of database access, html, etc. They are all high-level languages, so I'm not sure of what the overhead will do to a Pentium 75. Writing in C/C++, etc. is also an option, but would require more work. I've already expressed my dislike of PHP, but in fairness I won't exclude it since there are a lot of people out there that develop web applications with it.

These are just random thoughts. The author makes no warranty on their accuracy, or fitness for any particular purpose. :slight_smile:

Regards,
Pat

···

---
Patrick Toal
ptoal@takeflight.ca

On 2009-12-21, at 5:20 PM, tag wrote:

Hi Colin,

I have been watching this thread closely and there has been some great input. As a user of Sailwave a both big and small clubs and as a professional sail administrator and a volunteer, I thought I would chip in.

I think it would be worth listing the pros and cons of a web based system so that those of us less IT orientated can better understand the situation.

whilst most of the against comments have come from the smaller clubs, here is one from a bigger club. I quite often go out on the RC boat and have results done prior to returning to the club. Whislt out there I have no connectivity so would need a stand alone module, as discussed earlier, to produce results and then put them on the web system.

Is the biggest benefit of going web based the multi platform issue?

I have some time ago given up on using sailwave for club keel boat racing, though still use it for one design and stand alone IRC events. Any rewrite in my mind would be worthless without a substantial handicap module which many have been asking and waiting patiently for. This would open up the program to significantly more users.

Apart from that, sailwave is the best there is. Once again thanks for you fantastic efforts.

Justin Kelleher.

------------------------------------

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25

Hi Colin

I quite like the idea of it going to a web app. In fact I have
considered doing a simple version myself.

Windows users can install Wampserver which includes Apache,MysQL&
PHP on Windows. I run this on my laptop just fine and would suffice for those
days when we are running races offshore out of reach of the internet.

Once you return to the club or home when you have good internet connection
the results can easily be uploaded to website.

I have been playing with Drupal a lot lately and think it would
also be nice to create an adaptor for this as it is becoming very popular
lately.

This will allow competitors to fill in their entry forms
online, create secure login to help with DPA.

Will save a lot of time for us having to re-enter all their data
they send in and for the few that do send their data in, we can use the same
web interface to enter their data

The Handicap committee will have access to the website from home
and be able to assign appropriate handicaps as and when entries are received
(no waiting for race day)

On race day all entries will be ready and entered, you will
simply need to enter the elapsed times and the results will be known

If there is an easy way to export import results in CSV format
or something then other tools can be used to record elapsed times if needed

Printing stays as you have always done it in Webbrowser print

If you have an Iphone app or blackberry the results might
be ready on the website before you hit the shore.

After this is developed you will have to start working on a tool
that can calculate theresults before the race finished (Giggle!)

Terry

From:
sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Colin
Jenkins

···

Sent: 18 December 2009 16:31
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [sailwave] web based sailwave?

thanks for the quick feedback
david/ralph/tony

one possibility that covers everything is using a thin client. you could
download sailwave windows and run locally, or if you want to use the web, use
the thin client - the interface would be exactly the same. however the
problems with thin clients in my experience is printers and file locations and
server loading. i don’t like this idea.

my preference is a server side sailwave (Ajax) API - an engine
(PHP/mySQL). with client side javascript (or java or anything platform
independent) user interfaces. I would provide a default one (ug), but
others could write their own and interface other apps into the API - including
a windows UI. i envisage scoring systems as scripts - i supply appendix A
and addendum C (maybe :)) - but if your club has some weird and wonderful
scoring systyem (and we know they are out there) - then a script for that
could be developed - independently of the standard stuff. i envisage
publishing formats similarly - once javascript is in the loop anything is
possible - (it is now actually if i made the data available as CDATA then
formatted it with javascript).

however, i take the point about the work involved writing a new UI - is it
actually feasible - there is a surprising number fo windows in sailwave - a new
UI ‘paradigm’ would be needed maybe.

as an engine/database with all
the results server side, some awesome calculations could be done to get
handicaps out of it on a regional bases - i.e. N miles of long/lat!

but what about the DPA and how do sites get around that now? it is
largely ignored?

anyway just thinking aloud because the majority of my private emails is about
platforms.

my skills are
php/mysql/javascript/jquery+ui/c/c++ - not the sun java side of things.

there are literally thousands
of clubs out there using sailwave - i would like to bring them together into a
sailwave web community - with social app like features as well (subscribe to
events, make friends, auto microsites for events etc) - but actually deciding a
route is very difficult… i have started and failed a few times which is
why i thought i’d throw it open - at the risk of a competitor with more
resources doing it before me…

CJ

David Moring wrote:

Colin,

I’m a sailor and
a professional programmer who also follows Sailwave peripherally.
I agree the idea of a web interface would be a huge benefit on the
surface - depending on how you envision the actual web app being available. A
couple of issues I see would be:

  1. Where the scorer has no
    web access - a common situation at many clubs. Thus, if you would do some
    sort of web app that could be downloaded and installed on the user’s local web
    server (as well as possibly being available at SailWave.com or some such), then
    you get around the “offline issue”.

  2. For the online app, you’d
    have to be able to scale it out to store and retrieve scoring by user/login.
    The storage and bandwidth requirements would be pretty good for that.

My initial 2 cents…
anything I can help or kibitz on, please let me know!

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Jenkins colin@sailwave.com
To: Sailwave User Group sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:15:32 +0000
Subject: [sailwave] web based sailwave?

I
am constantly asked for Sailwave to be made available on other platforms and
unfortunately because of the original (bad) choice of dev platform, I can’t do
it.

I’m going to have to face up to a rewrite because constant requests are also
being made for a web based platform.

So my thinking is leaning towards just using the web. Which would also
make it available on iPhones etc.

Web based has lots of advantages. automatically render the data as a
website, easily do competitor entry etc.

Any thoughts…?

Colin J

sailwave





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26

Hi Colin,

I just stumbled across this, which you may find useful in your progress towards a Web-based Sailwave that could also run on the desktop.

http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-desktop/

Regards,
Pat

···

---
Patrick Toal
ptoal@takeflight.ca

27

interesting…

cj

Patrick Toal wrote:

···

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