Ariadne - Technical description

Ariadne Design decisions

As the platform for Ariadne MS-Access is chosen. It is chosen as it is for most people possible to obtain a copy. Furher it integrates database and programming environment. Other platforms are more expensive, more difficult to obtain, or require more specialist knowledge. Some pro's and con's:
1. For the amount of data of a competition, the number of concurrent users and the reliability of the product, MS-Access is sufficient (as a number of years experience show).
2. Drawback is that Ariadne is not portable to other environments. (Other databases, other developing environments, other operating systems.). As Ariadne develops further this may impose the problem of a vendor lock in.
3. As of record locking and roll back of transactions, MS Access is not strong. This imposes design constraints in database design and database access. I.e. take care that in time critical operations no two independent processes are accessing the same table.
Ariadne is implemented as a set of linked MS Access databases. Ariadne-Main contains all the forms, queries and programmingcode . The Ariadne current competition database contains only tables of the current competition. The Ariadne archive database contains only tables with archived data of past competitions. This architecture makes it possible to change the current competition under an Ariadne-Main, and also to link more Ariadne-Mains on different networked PC's to the same current competition database. (As to provide for the different tasks as event administration, time collection and penalty collection).
Data which can be updated simultaneously from different processes (time collection , penalty collection) must be kept in different tables to prevent record locking in time critical situations.
Table T020-Run-statustype is to be maintained on table level.
Table T025-Timing-event-status-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T030-Role-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T031-CU-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T032-Boat-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T033-Gender is to be maintained on table level.
Table T044-Age-class is to be maintained on table level.
Table T050-Start-number has no maintenance form. Startnumbers (Bib's) can be maintained via a query.
Table T060-Country is to be maintained on table level.
Table T065-Language is to be maintained on table level.
Table T242-Document-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T243-Document-template is to be maintained on table level.
Table T244-Mail-mode is to be maintained on table level.
Table T246-Mail-destination is to be maintained on table level.
Table T630-Run-event-fault-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T632-Run-event-type is to be maintained on table level.
Table T700-Ariadne-system is to be maintained on table level.
Table T705-Message is to be maintained on table level.
Table T720-Function is to be maintained on table level.
Table T750-Help-page is to be maintained on table level.
Table T081-SI-temp is a tempory table for the calculation of start intervals
Graphical User Interface (GUI): It is required to make the form exit explicit and consistent with buttons Close, Cancel, OK, Save, etc. If you close the form with the windows close button (right top) it is not clear or users what the exit status is (is the record saved or not ?)

Change history

date	change
Jan2016	Ariadne 5.4, reviewed, updated
Jun2007	Ariadne 4.5, updated, translated into English
Oct2002	Ariadne 4.1, text converted to html