Sky Website
 

Anyone else finding it to be a real pain in the butt the last week or so?

Load times are slow as hell or just doesn't work at all. Can't really do my ratings because sky website seems to be sucking.

Anyone got same problem?

Yeah same. Sometimes the list of runners is incomplete... might miss half the field. Other times there are no runners, or scratched runners are shown as not scratched.

mine keeps saying the operation was timed out
excel runtime error

my sheets will work some times fingers crossed, and my sheet keeps saying that it is a sky issue and the its are working on it
been going on since wed
cheers Rick

I have emailed them so many times in the past that they ignore my emails now.
It was about errors of scratching actual runners, mainly greyhounds and not updating their data. Both gallops and greys.

I had a phone conversation with someone that did not go well for either of us when he blurted out that it's a free service after all.
It only deteriorated after I remarked that a free service that don't work ain't worth the money we pay for.
Besides it's not free, we all pay for it one way or other.

Today I missed out on Warragul greys all of NZ and Newcastle gallops.
Seriously thinking of renewing my sub with a provider I thought never to do business with again.

Any hints as to who that other mob is?

sure, if not against the rules, it's Cyberhorse, still the least expensive, but they let us down badly before.

Thanks blackdog1. I remember that debacle with Cyberhorse, quite disgraceful.

I ended up giving in and just watching the swans (my team) because I was getting too frustrated. Like you've said, some races worked, others were blank, some didn't load at all. Quite frustrating, I understand its a 'free' service but gees. It seems to me like their hosting is failing them at peak times. Generally its fine later at night when your checking results or on a light racing day, but wednesday and saturday has been horrible.

Only going to get worse as spring rolls on unless they fix it, hopefully its all good soon. Otherwise i might have to change my sheets a bit and use cyberhorse as well, but that would be a pain and not something i'd like to do.

Working well
 

This works.

www.skyracing.com.au/tab/form/index.php

That's what I've been using. Every single time I've gone through the site there has been at least one error or omission. If you're not comparing it to something then you may not notice (missing runners for example).

Average
 

Oh right. Got you now Fred. You're quite right about the info, although I find most sites have to be double checked for accuracy. (Pretty average really when they know money is riding on their info.)

They seem to be technical glitches though, not genuine errors, because a page that shows all of the runners will sometimes drop runners when I revisit it 10 minutes later. Dodgy stuff.

Their terms of use page is broken too, so they are really opening themselves up. If someone missed out on a big trifecta or quaddie due to bad info they could lose in court. I heard something similar happened at a TAB outlet a while ago, where the punter got paid out half of the bet he would have placed.

Not if it's a free service.
I'd say their database connection to the webpage has a glitch, many of these SQL databases need to be compacted regularly and the transaction log compacted or it grows beyond it's capability and starts these sorts of errors.

Looks like its not playing ball again today. Starting to get annoyed now.

Every other website feeding into excel fine as per usual, Sky just seems to not work at all.

EDIT: Seems to load instantly outside of excel on the actual skyform website (in chrome), any ideas on what the issue might be?

2nd EDIT: Scratch that looks like none of the tables down the bottom load on most of the racers (i.e. TIME, WET, RATING etc etc)

Nope, it's not working.
Both the greys and horses data playing up, I think I had enough of this.

edit;
caught it at the right moment and worked really fast.
fingers crossed it keeps working?

edit;
spoke too soon, full of errors, give up!

Yup it's meant that I haven't placed a bet today and probably won't.

Starting to think I unfortunately may need to update my spreadsheet to grab the data from somewhere else.

Pretty dam frustrating.

EDIT:

What a surprise, seems to be working fine now unless I caught it at a good time. Only seems to be terrible when more people would be using it earlier in the day.

downloaded them again it got most of it but not all.
can't understand the problem though?
I'm not much of an X on websites but how can a bunch of data work one minute and then not 5 minutes later?

hi i think you did catch it at the right moment mine would not work this morning but as soon as the race meetings started race 1 i could down load all the spreadsheet for that meeting.
keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow.
cheers guys Rick

what I'm going to try is to download tomorrow's greys later tonight.
after much pleading they decided not to scratch the emergencies automatically the day before. They still do it in the morning, and I can't fathom out why do it, before the scratchings are known?
Surely it's extra work putting form data back on etc..

How are you guys loading it into a spreadsheet? I couldn't find any spreadsheet link or any XML.

Sorry guys have not been around much, just finished moving house and put my punting on hold for a break, the only time i ran my sheet was for the tipping comp and it worked ok then.

I guess since is a free service all we can do if it keeps up is move on, if anyone has suggestions on a free data source let me know, i don't think there is one that is as complete including trots and greys but if we can get the horses up and running maybe i could look else where for the other data, i have some free time and a little better setup after the move so will see how we go.

Shaun, RISA doesn't have hounds and trotts but I think it has all other data. I use it for a portion of my spready but the bulk of it is from sky at the moment.

It's working fine tonight to check/record today's results but has been terrible during the day when its getting used.

I used Sky today for my tipping bets and worked fine, i have a couple other sites to look at when i get a chance next week, is always a major re`write when i have to change form providers.

Worked fine for me today all day. I think they might have just been having server or hosting issues last week but who knows.