well, somebody had to be first

[soap108]

Mike, Raul, and I had several philosophical discussions on scouting last year, and I want to bring up one of the many subjects for this community to review.

I'd like to see if it's acceptible to steer the Handheld Systems into the following approach:

Let "S" be a common set of data fields for all handheld scouting.
Let "W" be a unique set of data fields that the organizers of WASH want to track.
Let "G" be a unique set of data fields that the organizers of GMCIA want to track.

WASH tracks data S and W.
GMCIA tracks data S and G.
SOAP fully supports the importation and distribution of S, W, and G.

The ideas behind this approach are:
1) Try as we may, and good intentions though we have, it is tough to agree on Everything.
2) Data set S is large enough to capture the voted-on most likely to be "value added" data fields.
3) Data set S is small enough to allow for some individual components that allow each System to stand out in a unique way, but still help the entire FIRST Community. Also off-the-shelf database programs for PalmOS sometimes have a 30 field limit. Limiting S to, say 20, would allow for just enough variation, but maintain compatibility/re-usability across Systems.


your thoughts?,
KA - 108 (SOAP)