Dramatic SFB: New Database

[Matt]

Hey Gents,

I know it's been a week or two since you've heard from me. I've been 
working on the database and it's running over time.

Fortunately, I'm on the last step before actually pushing the data up to 
the server. Generating the data took a couple of years. (It took about a 
year to generate the original data straight from the products I owned. 
This project started that all over and is working on stuff I needed to 
pull info from sources I didn't have on-hand. Additionally, I'm 
documenting more information than I originally did.)

Once the "generic" database was done (which was finished a little after 
thanksgiving), I needed to layer it all together to get the data in a 
form used by the campaign software. That was done at about the turn of 
the year. You might remember that a couple months ago, I planned to be 
finished at the end of the year.

The current (and last) step is to sanity-check the latest data and 
handle the corner cases. This takes care of things like year-in-service 
errors, where (for example) Stinger-1s were being used by ships who also 
carry PFs. Also, few of the "obsolete" dates were entered (which the 
software uses to keep your build lists down to a meaningful level. So 
that you don't get Y-era ships being offered in Y183.)

I'm about a quarter through that last step. The empires are alphabetical 
and I'm through (among others) the Federation, Gorn, and the Hydrans. 
I'm working on the Klingons. Due to the not-conjectural/is-conjectural 
nature of the B10s, they've got a host of issues with their fighters and 
the YIS dates. I have a certain amount of dread when I realize that the 
Romulans (with their large three-hull-styles fleet) are still ahead of me.

So, where I had originally hoped to get through the last step in a week 
(finishing up this last friday), I've settled to being happy if I can 
get a mere 10% of the list done in a day. As much as I hate to set a 
deadline (the nice thing about deadlines is the wooshing sound they make 
as they go by) I expect that at the above rate, I will probably be 
opening up new campaigns in the last week of the month.


--Matt