Release Notes > What is New in RaceMate 7.0

Why 7.0 Instead of 6.0?

RaceMate for DOS 6.5 (released in about 1999) was the last DOS version RaceMate. A number of RaceMate users are still keeping this memorable DOS RaceMate in their hard drive. In order to avoid confusion, the Windows version of RaceMate will be upgraded from version 5.0 to 7.0, skipping the version number 6.0.

Database Engine Upgrade

The database engine of RaceMate 7.0 has been upgraded to Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0, which is the latest and most stable version of Microsoft Visual FoxPro since its first release in 1995. Microsoft has fixed quite a number of bugs in this latest release. You will experience far less system abnormalities in RaceMate 7.0. Microsoft Visual FoxPro is the fastest desktop database engine available as at this writing. No other databases engine can match its lightning data query speed.

User Interface Enhancement

Visual cue for hyperlinking fields

Whenever you double-click on a horse name column in a view, the Horse Data form will be opened. We call the such a column a hyperlinking column. In RaceMate 7.0, when your mouse hangs over a hyperlinking column, the mouse pointer will turn to an overlapping hands icon, which prompts for double-clicking.

Visual cue for sortable columns

Many table columns of RaceMate can be sorted by clicking on their column headers. In RaceMate 7.0, when you put your mouse over the heading of a sortable column, the mouse pointer will change to a double arrow icon, which cues you that the column can be sorted in either ascending or descending orders.

View Definition Enhancement

In the new version, you can assign a form to be hyperlinked when a user-defined column is double-clicked. The hyperlinking property of the user-defined column is defined in the Advanced Settings form, which will be shown when you click on the [Advanced] setting. You may define the following items on the form:

1.	Form to Open: Choose the form that your want to open here.

2.	Open Race (RaceID): Input an MCL function returning the ID of the target race, horse, jockey, or stable which you want to show on the hyperlinked form. RaceMate will evaluate the function and use the returned ID for opening the corresponding record in the target form.

3.	Cursor at (Horse ID): Input an MCL function returning the ID of a horse. RaceMate will try to locate the horse in past record table in the target form.

In the example in the following figure, a user-defined column LastWin is defined in the Declaraction view. The column returns the last winning date of each horse using the formula:

HrDate(1,'For HrFp( )=1')

When you double-click on the column, RaceMate will open a new Race Data form and open the race record corresponding to the race ID returned by the following function:

HrRaceID(1,'For HrFp( )=1')

After the race record is open, RaceMate will then highlight the horse that you double-click on (returned by the function HrHorseID( )) in the past record list.

New Report Engine

Zoom percentage

New zoom percentage options are available in the dropdown list of the Report Preview toolbar. You may now zoom a report up to 500%.

Multiple-page preview

You may now display more than one page in the new report preview form by clicking on the report preview toolbar. Viewing a considerably track work record of a considerably long period may be helpful in finding special training pattern horses. If you have a large monitor, you will find this new feature valuable.

Reverting to old report engine

The new report engine is powerful but runs in a much lower speed. If you feel comfortable with the old report engine and do not need the new functionalities which the new report engine provides, you may revert the report engine to its previous version in the RaceMate Options page as show in the following figure.

Exporting Horse Information

You may now export data of horses into Microsoft Excel. Choose [Export Horse Data] from the [Tools] menu to get access to the new function.

Overseas Records

A new "Overseas" page is added into the Horse data form. The page shows the overseas racing record of the horse before it comes to Hong Kong.

Multiline to Character Column Type Conversion Support in Views

In previous versions of RaceMate, when you modify a view and change the field type of a column from "Multiline" text type to "Character" type, the content of the column will be lost. In the new version, change the column type from Multiline to Character or vise versa will keep all the content.

New Setup

The setup program for RaceMate 7.0 has completely rewritten. A setup program for RaceMate 5.0 Hong Kong Edition is about 170M in size while that for RaceMate 7.0 is only about 35M. Whenever a use buys a new computer or finds it RaceMate data corrupted, he may download a new setup program form RaceMate's website. The effective compression of the new version dramatically reduces the download time.

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