[CompInaBox-discuss] CIB mid-summer update...

[Eric D N. <nie...@MI...>]

So I've been pushing ahead with the Ruby on Rails rewrite/redesign of
CompInaBox.

I have rudimentary functionality for competition setup (levels, styles, events,
dates, contact personal, etc) and I'm working into the registration process. 
I've been getting a little bogged down with some of the issues involved with
merging the per-competition databases with the central database, but hope to
have that resolved soon.  (More details on the current issues below, near the
end.)

I am planning to extend CIB to NDCA competitions over the fall (once I get the
collegiate needs taken care of).  I have a committment for a Feb 2008
competition.

I'll be attending a Ruby On Rails training course next week, I hope that will
help me be even more productive.

Current design issues:
  1.  Because I've merged all the satellite DB's into the central DB under the
new design, a few of my "solutions" from before don't port very well.  I'm
currently fighting the most with couple management.
    A.  Instead of a couples (id, leader_id, follower_id, ...) table, I'm moving
towards a "registrant_entry" table (id) coupled with a
"registrant_entry_membership" (id, registrant_entry_id, person_id, role).  Thus
couples, team matches, formation teams, and solo exhibitions can all be
"registrant_entries" for use in the event_registration table.  This makes some
queries easier and some harder, but on the whole I like where its going.
    B.  However, at present there is NO non-surrogate key information in the
registrant_entry table (ie its only column is the PGSQL SERIAL/MYSQL
auto-generate) key.  This does make some of the logic needed to create a
couple/check for duplicates a little complicated, but it developing.
    C.  The problem, at this point a "registrant_entry" is NOT associated with a
competition.  In the past, even in the per-competition DB, this was true as well
-- a couple without events wasn't considered registered.  However, my currently
planned "single-user" UI (non-team/studio) has split the "add-partner" step
from the "add events to couple" step.  Thus "event-less" couples will need to
be listed as options for receiving events.  This list could start to get long,
in the collegiate world with lots of partner swapping.
       i) Option 1:  Add a "competition_registrant_entries" table to hold the
active, but possible non-registered couples for a given competition.  "New
partner" adds to this list for this competition, along with some sort of
"Previous partner" select box.
      ii) Option 2: Add a way to flag "retired_partnerships" have all
non-retired partnerships show as non-registered, but registerable couples.
     iii) Option 3: Some other idea....


Eric