Some backstory before I go into the details here: I am a track and field coach. I run a website that displays track and field statistics throughout the state of Ohio. I am a lead software engineer for a large ticketing company. All of these add up to my current project: building a competitive product to Hy-Tek’s Meet Manager.

Requirements

In order to deliver a product that can be used by as many people as necessary, the following requirements exist:

• Must exist as both a hosted application and a client-installed application seamlessly
• Must be able to import Hy-Tek Meet Manager exports
• Must be able to import Hy-Tek Team Manager exports
• Must be able to interface with physical automatic timing systems
• Must be able to display live results on the web
• Must have a team and roster management component

I’m sure there will be other high-level requirements as I get to them, but this is a good start.

Technology

As I’m a .NET developer at heart, my initial implementation will be ASP.NET MVC on .NET Core. This will enable me to keep my costs down, as I can run .NET Core on any host. For the database, I will initially go with a hosted relational database solution, most likely MySQL or PostgreSQL. The driving force here is straightforward: the cheaper the better.

For the client-installed solution, I will be utilizing Electron on top of the same front-end assets used in the hosted solution. I’m not 100% certain on how to do offline data storage in the case of a no-internet situation, but I’m certain I can pull down a SQLite database to be used locally, then write a synchronization process to the hosted solution.

The display of live results on the web will make use of a websocket service to push updates to connect clients. Again, in an offline situation, there will need to be a synchronization process, so live updates will not be possible.

Right off the bat, I can see the difficult part of this project will be interfacing with hardware components, such as the automated timing systems. This will most likely go with a later phase, but this is an essential feature that needs to be worked on.

Work Tracking

I’ll be using the following public Trello board to track my progress on this project: https://trello.com/b/MJ9yZMP4

Next Up

Stay tuned as I move forward in my development efforts to build out the MVP for this product!