Online League Utilty

[Tullius]

In reponse to a request i have written a little online league utility.

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Online League Utility
Version 1.00 (6/18/2009)
created by Tullius

This utility is a little tool which is written for Maximum Football. To install the utility you should have Maximum Football version 2.2 (the latest version is 2.2.90). You will also need the Microsoft Net Framework 3.5 which is a free.
The utility shall overcome some problems for online leagues which are still in the main game.
It does not add new functions. So all updates have to be done before a owner starts the utilty. It can be used by team owners and the commissioners.

Team Owners

The owner will send a team file to the commissioner. When the program is started he has to choose his league and his team.

The utility assumes that
a) transactions (sign or release players) will be made by the commissioner
b) status changes (activ or inactive) are made by the owner.

The utilty reads all the roster changes (b) and the actual depth chart and saves these information after hitting the „Export“ button in a text file. The file has a name which consists of the the team name and the team id in the league database.

To avoid any problems the file should not be edited ! In the case of changes or problems a new file should be created.

Commissioners

The commissioner starts the program, loads the league and select the team which roster and depth chart should be updated. The league folder is opened and the programm looks for a team file which then can be imported (Button „Import“).

[garysorrell]

Well, this looks great. The remote files have been giving us fits in the WCFL. We will have to give this a test run. Thanks Tullius.

[Marauders]

ORIGINAL: garysorrell

Well, this looks great. The remote files have been giving us fits in the WCFL. We will have to give this a test run. Thanks Tullius.

What problems did you see with the remote files?

There were a few problems with rosters (last in first out) that I, and others, reported in beta. It would be nice to have a list of things that did not get resolved.

[Tullius]

ORIGINAL: Marauders

What problems did you see with the remote files?

There were a few problems with rosters (last in first out) that I, and others, reported in beta. It would be nice to have a list of things that did not get resolved.

I think the files are ok but after viewing the files i saw a potential problem which is known from server databases and requires there a little effort to avoid it. I think an example explains the issue:

Commissioner G sends the league file to Team Owners B and M. The league file has table called "Teams_DepthCharts" (tdc). The table uses ID (which every data table should) and the last row has an
id = 1000. Now lets look at two cases:

Case 1 (Week 1)

Owner B

The starting FB is injuried who is now on the injuried list. B selects a new FB1, saves the changes and creates the remote file.

Owner M

He does not like his starting the QB and demotes him as QB2 and the previous QB2 is now the starter. He also sends his remote file

G imports both files and all should be fine. In the tdc the programm updates all changes because it has the correct id of the changed spot and can so update the table.

Case 2 (Week 2)

G sends again the league file

Owner B

His injuried FB is now back but i want a little depth at this position and creates now (a new) FB2 spot. This spot is saves on a new ID in the tdc (ID = 101). He sends the remote file to G who updates the his master file and all changes are here updated.

Owner M

He also has the idea of adding a new spot for his Dime Back and creates a new DB2 spot. This spot is also saved at ID = 101 because the original file which he has received by G used only 100 ids. G now receives his remote file and after the updates all of M changes are saved because the row where the id = 101 is overwritten so that change which B has made is lost. The depth chart of Team B shows now only a FB1 but not a FB2.

The correct solution is that the original league file add two new rows (id = 101 and id=102) but this is now impossible. My tool avoids the conflict and uses an other method to update the tdc.

This is my theory which i have not really tested but BigSmooth reported that sometimes the depth charts in the WCFL were not properly updated and after viewing the structure of the remote files i had this theory. As single beta tester you can not find the problem because you use the same database every time and the problem can only occur when the league database is updated on two different places.

[Marauders]

I reported as a bug that if two team owners submit an updated team file, and they both tried to pick up the same free agent, the team that is processed last will end up with the player.  It's too bad this doesn't work right. 
 
It would have been great if Shaun Sullivan could have come up with source code for the Front Office and ConMan programs used for FBPro.  It would have been a great program to port to Maximum Football to handle the GM functions of the game.