Schematic Diagram

SportsDB: Open Database Schema for Sports Information

(Formerly known as XTOSS: The XML Team Open Sports Schema.)

The goal of SportsDB is to spur development of applications that can make use of a database schema designed from the top-down to be accommodating for data published by multiple sources, covering myriad sports, and cross-referencing many different types of content. The schema builds upon 5 years of work by XML Team Solutions in supplying tools that parse SportsML, load it into databases, execute queries, and format the results. Typical applications that could make use of this standard include:

• Portals
• Alerting Services
• Fantasy League Management Software
• Pick-The-Tournament-Winner contests (à la NCAA March brackets, in the U.S.)
• Wagering Information and Processing Software
• And More

SportsDB has been designed to model "Sports Reality" as effectively as possible in a relational database context. The schema inherits from the open SportsML standard, adopting its vocabularies and core approach toward commonalities among the sports. It is capable of supporting queries for the most intense of sports data applications, yet is simple enough for use by those with minimal database experience. Finally, SportsDB enables streamlined coding techniques, where possible, through adoption of naming standards accessible to many popular model-view-controller publishing software frameworks.

The SportsCaster Web Service is a companion to SportsDB, and has also been released under GNU General Public License. SportsCaster allows you to create web pages by writing custom URLs, rather than by writing custom SQL queries. See the link at left for details. SportsCaster can be used in conjunction with the SportsMLT Conversion Library for finer control over content renditions.

SportsDB 23: A Minor Touchup (April 02, 2009 12:36am EDT)

Not many changes with SportsDB 23 -- most notably, includes an abstract_blob field to correspond to SportsDB 22's sportsml_blob field. Now users have the choice of storing SportsML files on the file system, or directly in the database.

SportsDB 22 Released (March 17, 2009 6:38pm EDT)

We skipped a public release of Build 21, so no need to be alarmed. Build 22 includes such advances as expanded general stats and ice-hockey capabilities, a new rankings table, and more.

SportsCaster Web Service update (January 09, 2009 3:39pm EST)

The latest build for SportsCaster now includes support for SQL Server, and also includes a nifty debug-mode that prints out all SQL Queries employed (available when asking for HTML renditions of content).

SportsCaster Web Service beta announced (November 06, 2008 7:52pm EST)

As a companion to SportsDB, the SportsCaster Web Service has been released under GNU General Public License. SportsCaster is a PHP framework for querying your database. It allows you to create web pages by writing custom URLs, rather than by writing custom SQL queries.

As a companion to SportsCaster, the SportsMLT Conversion Package has also been released under GNU GPL. SportsMLT is an XSLT conversion library for SportsML, which of course can get stored within SportsDB, or generated by SportsDB query results.

While both SportsCaster and SportsMLT have been in use by many sports websites as earlier iterations, these first GNU GPL releases should be considered "beta." Your comments and involvement are welcome.

SportsDB 20 Released (September 18, 2008 7:07pm EDT)

Improvements include generic action-tables (for sports with no specific action tables), expanded tennis stats, additional fields useful for storing Olympics results, and other minor adjustments.

SportsDB 19 Released (May 28, 2008 2:00am EDT)

Improvements include new play-by-play tables for soccer, adjusted standings tables, and new tables for awards and records.

SportsDB 18 Released (March 30, 2008 11:23am EDT)

Improvements include play-by-play tables for ice hockey, a better person_phases table, and impoved indexing for display_names.

SportsDB 16 Released (January 31, 2008 11:44pm EST)

Improvements include better pitch-by-pitch storage for baseball, and expanded weather details.