25 manna

[Domhnull Mor]

You have to feel sympathy for the organisers of this years' 25-manna relay in Sweden after their computer system gave up during the event last Sunday. With almost 400 teams and 10,000 runners they've certainly got their work cut out trying to sort out the results. Not only are they having to manually pair up SI cards with individual runners and teams (this was supposed to be done by scanning a barcode on the runners' bibs as they entered the changeover area), they have now found out that the team that crossed the finishing line first and was declared the winner, OK Linné (including Cat Taylor), actually missed out a control on one of the earlier legs. This was only announced this morning (Wednesday) after they managed to check the data for the first 25 finishing teams. Halden SK are now the official winners.
What was otherwise an unusually technically challenging 25-manna, run in fantastic autumn weather will now go down in history for other reasons.
How do the Finns manage it at Jukola each year?

[AndyC]

I agree -and they will all think there was something they individually should have done to prevent it.
I wonder how long the thread here would be if it happened at a UK major event?

[Jagge]

How do the Finns manage it at Jukola each year?

The system used in 25-manna is a client-server application. If server with the database becomes slow or is down, or network is down for broken network adapter or anything, they can't check runners in or download punch data from sticks. It is not a problem if it's down just for a short moment, but runners can't wait long, especially check-in, so longer breaks will make it all collapse. For a unknown reason database at 25manna became too slow and checking-in and download became impossible. And they had to do check-in with pen and paper and use punch data from forest units (because they could not download sticks, server was down).

The system used in Jukola (and most races here) isn't a client-server application. Instead every computer is standalone with it's own database. When you check runner in, data gets stored into a local database. Backround process syncs data with the rest of the network. Even if network is down you can keep on checking in athelters without delays. When network and other computers are up and alive again data gets synced. Same with the download. When the race is over data is synced and every computers will have same data. If network goes and stays down you will have to take usb stick and pick up databases from each computer manually and merge them and you will have results. Even if some servers are on fire and network is down they most likey get results. As long as at least part of the newtwok and computes are up will there be no much delays and audience may not notice anything. I believe in Jukola data is also backed up locally, so if networks goes down (and makes syncing between computers impossible) and you keep on cheking in runners and then your hard drive goes into pieces you still are able to find the not-synced data from the back up drive.

There has been hardware failures (you must expect that if you build network outdoors and carry quite sensitive computer stuff around) - but because the system works like it does there usually is no permanent data losses or major disasters or delays.