Comments for Model Operations Processing System

Comment on Testing Completed; no outstanding issues by Simon

Simon — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:21:54 +0000

Yay! Congratulations!

Comment on Testing In Progress… by Simon

Simon — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:07:05 +0000

Awesome. That’s a lot bigger than I plan to make the database for the app I’m working on so it’s good to hear that it’s withstanding the stress test!

I use Sqlite Admin which is quite cool. It’s an Air app so it’s good for OSX, Windows and Linux.

Comment on Testing In Progress… by admin

admin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:01:56 +0000

So far so good, but for a database it’s still small volumes – 20 tables with a couple of tens or hundreds records/table. It also seems to stand up to a small amount of concurrent access. It’s not designed to be heavyweight, but it’s looking good for personal/team use( as opposed to enterprise use). Check out the front-ends for the database – I use SQLite Studio on Windows to view the db; there are other OS products that will do the same thing.

Comment on Testing In Progress… by Simon

Simon — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:33:10 +0000

I’ve just built my first Adobe Air app using SQLite (that’s what you’re using, right?) and it seems to be quite the capable RDMS but would definitely like to hear how well it handles a larger dataset.

Comment on Vapourware by Harold March

Harold March — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:12:36 +0000

Looks good so far. My program is using REALbasic. I have SQL databases and have 4 years of work in it. Not done yet. I have an old Mac G3 processor. Slow but works. Be glad to help test.

Hal March
Eastern Gully & Gorge RR
The route of the cracked EGG
We are Scrambling to get There

Comment on A program is never finished… by admin

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:36:43 +0000

The system’s still being completed: the car and loco modules are being rebuilt at the moment following an issue with data corruption in a heavy multi-user environment. After the car and loco modules have been re-written, the industry and timetable modules will be provided.

Traffic itself won’t be generated; instead, industry will make ‘demands’ on the railroad for empty cars to be made available for loading, and waybills will be created to have loaded cars moved to their destination. The information about how everything fits together can be seen on the Design page.

This site will be updated with progress on a regular basis.

Comment on A program is never finished… by Mark Stoube

Mark Stoube — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:52:53 +0000

I was looking on the ‘net for a waybill/traffice generating system and stumbled on your site. This looks promising, but I’m unclear about how operations actually get started. I’ve setup my ‘stax’,but I don’t see any method for entering car or loco data and it is also unclear how traffic actually is generated.

Can you illuminate me?

Thanks!

Comment on Simplification by Simon Fairbairn

Simon Fairbairn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:51:25 +0000

It’s funny, that’s exactly what happened to me today. I was wWorking on this WordPress theme and I thought we had a huge mountain still to climb with one of the pages I was developing that I hadn’t looked at in ages (probably cause I was scared of how much work it would be).

Took one look at it, wrote a couple of functions and BAM! Job’s a good ‘un.

Good to hear everything’s going well.

Comment on Locations – Updated Paper by Brian

Brian — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 07:22:12 +0000

Thanks James; after your comments you will see (in the latest paper, on Locos and Cars) that I have reduced the minimum length of a field to 1 (and raised the maximum to 10). Given that the length of the field is user defined I’ve really left it up to the railroad. But you would now be able to define a spot with as few as 3 characters (although it would have to be a small railroad!) using Area-Station-Place with one character each.

The way this will work technically is that the railroad will define the length of the reference (between 1 and 10) and data will be validated for that length. However, it will always store it as length 10 and just fill any remaining characters with spaces. When it gets shown on the screen, or printed out, or input as part of another command, the application will crunch it down to the defined length again. So if you define it as length 2, that’s all you will ever see it as, although the system will store it as length 10.

Also; they can also use letters as well – which helps on your other point about numbers. The weak spot in all this is that it does require careful setting up by the railroad. They need to make sure that they understand that, once set, they can’t change the size of the field – in other words, they need to understand the railroad in data terms rather than just operationally.

Thanks again for the input, most welcome.
Brian

Comment on Locations – Updated Paper by James C.L. Hoefnagel

James C.L. Hoefnagel — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:24:42 +0000

It makes sensw. Yet I guess it is important to set the lenght of the files being used for filling the code. IMHO we have to ask:
amount of areas on a layout > 10 then 2 digits else 1 digit
amount of stations in an area > 10 then 2 digits else 1
Etc for stationtype, function, place and place definition.

Maybe you ask yourself why am I “hammering” on short ID’s? The answer is simple, most humans cannot “read out”a number. If a car has to go from one spot to another and the numbers of those spots have 8 digits or less digits it will make a difference.

The output of the files forming the code should be readable printed on a card twice as big as a car card.
Long numbers look great, but they basically are hard to handle.