Vehicle Database

[Quackdave]

RE: Vehicle Database
I have put together a script that parses a string describing a batch of registrations, and converts it into a list of individual vehicles. So, you can enter something like MX61 AUT/U/YN-P/S-V/C-M/XR-YB/XD/F-K/M-P/KY/Z/LO/U/MO, or WLT 301-999.

Depending on how big batches are, and how neatly the registrations are arranged, something like this has the potential to speed up data input quite significantly, as any information common to the whole batch could be entered at the same time.

The tool is here. (Note: this is not very well tested as yet, so I can't promise that you won't end up in an infinite loop that crashes your browser!)

On the minus side, I tried to do something with my suggestions for automatically querying DVLA or Bus Lists On The Web, and they seem doomed to fail, since neither server appears to have CORS enabled, nor to accept HTTP GET requests. So, for now at least, it looks like if we want fields like taxation status, they will have to be looked up and entered manually.

Thinking back to the actual database, I'd been visualising a somewhat more severely normalised structure. I don't have particularly strong views on this, but one thing I definitely would suggest is putting operators in a separate table(s) linked by a key. As well as making it easier to ensure consistency, it would enable us to easily store additional information about operators and depots. I'd go for a hierarchy of at least three levels : operator as the middle one (or division, if it's a major group), with group above and depot below.

I'd also consider putting registrations in a separate table, because then the data in the vehicles table really would be static (assuming that a rebody or rebuild is considered a new vehicle). But maybe that's not such a major consideration.

I may try out a few more ideas soon, I'll let you know what I come up with.