System Requirements

The database is managed from your web browser and will work with virtually any platform or OS, no other client software is required. All you need is internet access and a browser that supports CSS, Javascript, and has Cookies enabled. Explorer5+ and Netscape6+, Safari, Firefox, Opera, and others should work fine.

Some Important Definitions! Please read...

Here are the basics of how players and tournaments are organized in the system:

Players
    A Player is someone who's been added to the database by a club director. A player record contains the player's name, city, state, and country, plus the player's main home clubs. Since a player might play at several different clubs, a player record is global and can be used by any club.

Club Players
    Club Players are those in your club player list (a subset of the global Players). A club player record adds the usual address book info plus some club specific items like "location" and "tournament level" to help organize your player lists.

Tournaments
    A Tournament is one or more club events that have a common title and completion date.

Events
    An Event is a section of a tournament that has a single set of final standings. Main and Consolation would be considered separate events if each has it's own distinct 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. places.

Brackets
    Brackets correspond to the drawsheets that make up an event. For example, if an event has Main Draw, 2nd Chance, and Final Playoff sections on the drawsheets, then there would be 3 corresponding brackets in the event.

Tournament Templates
    A Tournament Template is a snapshot of the tournament structure (everything but the player names and match results) making it easy to add future tournaments with the same layout.

Tournaments Small & Large...

Suppose you direct a local weekly tournament. Your tournament would have one event with one or two brackets and look something like this:

Typical Local Weekly Tournament Structure:
  Tournament Name: Tuesday Weekly
  Tournament Date: February 3, 2004
    Event: Main (1st, 2nd, 3rd place)
       Bracket: Main Draw
       Bracket: 2nd Chance

Now consider a much larger double elimination tournament with 3 divisions - Open, Intermediate, Novice - each with separate Consolation and Last chance events:

Typical Large Tournament Structure:
  Tournament Name: State Championships
  Tournament Dates: June 3-5, 2004
    Event(1): Open Championship (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th place)
       Bracket: Main Draw
       Bracket: 2nd Chance
       Bracket: Final Playoffs
    Event(2): Open Consolation (1st, 2nd place)
       Bracket: Main Draw
       Bracket: Final Playoffs
    Event(3): Open Last Chance (1st place)
       Bracket: Main Draw
    plus similar events for the Intermediate and Novice sections...

Here it becomes obvious why the database is set up the way it is. Your weekly 16 player event can be entered into the database in less than 10 minutes. The large tournament shown above will take some time but is still quite manageable.

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