Author Topic: Multiple tournaments: possible solution?  (Read 2413 times)

Linker_Split

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Multiple tournaments: possible solution?
« on: November 26, 2013, 01:54:32 AM »
Hi Corey,
you know I'm always pushing this discussion in roder to try to convince you  ;D
The problema is:
is it possible to run two or multiple tournaments at the same time?
your answer was always "NOT POSSIBLE"

I'm gona show you my idea now:
You can modify the software as you want because you are the DEV, and you said that the clock is HTML based and runs in Internet Explorer.
Since we can open a lot of IE pages, why cant you try to modify the TOurnament Director in order to open multiple clocks in multiple IE pages?
The software will be always one instance open, but with multiple tournaments running and diferent clocks.
COuld this be possible?

Corey Cooper

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Re: Multiple tournaments: possible solution?
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2013, 11:54:34 AM »
I'm not sure I've ever said it's "not possible", because of course it is.  But the TD wasn't designed to do this, and it would be a pretty huge undertaking to make it work.  I'm always about balancing the cost of a feature with its benefit.  The cost usually means how difficult the feature will be to implement, how much of my time it will require, and how much it will impact other features.  Benefits includes not only how much of a benefit it provides, but also how much of the TD's audience will find the feature beneficial.

Something like this has a huge cost, since it hits pretty much 90% of the application.  It would likely take me months to complete, and I'm not even sure how some of it would work.  I would likely be working on nothing else, so all other work on the application would have to be halted.  So: very large cost.  On the benefits side, I can see how this would be a really big benefit ... for some people.  In fact, the audience for this is pretty small.  I only know of a handful of users that would benefit, and extrapolating from that would probably (I'm guessing) mean that perhaps dozens of users would benefit from this.  In the grand scheme of things that is a very small audience.  So in this case the cost greatly outweighs the benefit.

Opening another window with a clock in it would likely be the easiest part of the whole concept.  All of the Settings window tabs are designed for a single tournament.  It's not only a coding issue, but a design issue.

OK, having said all of that, version 3.3 will have a way to run more than one instance of the software at the same time.  Because the database, data store, and preferences aren't designed to work concurrently, it won't be able to run concurrently by default.  You'll have to start the software using a special flag.  And keep in mind that there's a potential for data loss regarding those items I just mentioned.

Linker_Split

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Re: Multiple tournaments: possible solution?
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2013, 12:26:47 PM »
So it's both a coding issue and a design issue. That's bad :(
What you mean when saying "data loss" for the Database and data store??
Is there a way to have a little program with all the datastore in it that can be accessed simultaneously by different instances of the TD?

#ADDED
Is it possible to have different IE windows opened for different tab layout (chipcount, seating charts and so on)?
« Last Edit: November 26, 2013, 12:53:11 PM by Linker_Split »

Corey Cooper

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Re: Multiple tournaments: possible solution?
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2013, 10:12:37 AM »
Quote
What you mean when saying "data loss" for the Database and data store??
Is there a way to have a little program with all the datastore in it that can be accessed simultaneously by different instances of the TD?

If you have two instances of the TD running on the same PC, they will be accessing the same preferences file, data stores configuration file, database, and the same data store.  Let's say you open tournament "A" on one of those instances and also open the same tournament "A" on the other instance.  You make some changes on both instances and save the tournament.  What happens?  The changes made by whichever one of those instances saved the tournament *first* will be lost.  Overwritten when the other instance saved the same tournament after the first one saved it.

That can be avoided pretty easily.  Don't open the same tournament with both instances.  But what about the database?  There's only one database and changes to it are written to disk automatically.  If you add player X using the first instance, then add player Y using the second instance, player X will be lost, because the second instance knew nothing about player X and it re-wrote the database index file, leaving player X out.

So, data loss can occur, fairly easily.  There are ways around this if you are very diligent, but the TD isn't aware of the other instance and thus it isn't able to help avoid data loss.

Quote
#ADDED
Is it possible to have different IE windows opened for different tab layout (chipcount, seating charts and so on)?

Yes, of course it's possible, but my last comments regarding this apply.