Live timing

There are a lot of ways to skin this cat. I've written variations of them all.

The method you describe is very crude but will, more or less, work. It is a hobbyist-level solution; it will not be able to handle a very heavy load, the web server will be forced to handle the caching rather than a database server, so it will chug along until you have more than a few dozen users, then it will choke. "Choking" will not only preclude listeners from viewing your data, it will prevent *you* from getting data ONTO the server. Your security options will also be very limited.

You can FTP your XML files onto your web server if you don't have much expertise. If you are a more experienced programmer, either write a web service or write a server-based transactional program which monitors a TCP/IP socket and sends an ACK so the timing app knows data has been successfully received.

The extremely crappy FIS live-timing uses Flash, which is another variation on this theme, but a very bad one. Amongst the limitations are that all clients must load the Flash plug-in, which eliminates a lot of devices (mobile PDAs, for example) from the potential listening pool.

Everyone doing this on a public and professional scale uses a database to cache incoming data and outgoing requests. It's a big pain in the a$$ to set up and to maintain, but if you're going to have more than a few people pulling data, you've got to go that route.

Again, if you're a good enough programmer, use AJAX encapsulation to auto-refresh sections of the client page rather than posting back the entire page, which hogs resources and angers users who may be looking at the bottom of the page when it refreshes. Simply putting a timed "refresh" statement in your javascript is the crudest, most amateurish way of accomplishing the update, but if that's the only arrow you've got in your quiver, then that's what you're stuck with.

The best live apps I've seen are the ones IBM produces for their Live Scoreboards at the Grand Slam tennis events (Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open, French Open) and the Augusta Masters golf. A superb piece of programming, but they have huge resources. Several dozen people work on / maintain it, and they use a whole rack of servers & million-dollar worldwide mirroring. IBM uses the IBM WebSphere technology, which is wonderfully scalable and fabulously robust, but extremely expensive and difficult to install / maintain / deploy. It is designed for companies with IT departments, not hobbyists.

Ok, I feal your pain.
Here at Killington, I use BART--Bad A** Race Timing software.
This gives you the option to send live results to your web page seamlessly.
It is data base driven, which causes a slight delay when a racer comes out of the gate--but that is a data base thing.
Tom's web site is http://www.bart.chipco.com/

BTW--He was the official timing for the Nordic games in Salt Lake

Hi, I am a programmer, from Mexico, I have a TDC8001, two Timys also, You can download by using the COMTOFILE program... I have developed my own software with visual Basic to download on line each record to an Excel Interface for Enduro Races, then I can change and edit the numbers in Excel, but can make the information be send to an FTP server for an php script can read the data and publish. Mi language is Spanish and a little bit English, contact me to jasistemas@hotmail.com if think I can make the work for you.