ORC PCS

PCS Web Service

This service calculates ORC PCS scoring online. To use this service:

  • Build a XML document with the race data as described in PCS module specification.
  • Send this document with a POST request to http://data.orc.org/public/WPCS.dll.
  • The server performs the PCS calculation. The response is the input document, populated with the implied wind & corrected times, as described in the specification.

You can find a test page for this service here.

PCS Downloads

PCS Module version 1.3.0.6 including source code
The PCS module is provided to the public domain for free, to be embedded as a dynamically linked library (DLL) in any windows race scoring application, to calculate the implied wind and corrected time of races setup for ORC Performance Curve Scoring. Full source code of the PCS module is provided for reference.

PCS module specifications

PCS Module test application
The PCS module test application is provided for free download to any user or developer as a documentation and perpetual reference of the PCS (Performance Curve Scoring) method, able to determine the "Implied Wind" of any given boat in any given race whose course is known by observation, or selected among multiple options, based on the data supplied via the rating file (rms or json) by the ORC VPP software. The module is intended to verify and experiment the method, constructing races, be them virtual or real. Example race files are included in the download.

Rating data acquisition

To use the web service to query the ORC database for the rating data of the currently active certificates for a single boat:

http://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll?action=DownBoatRMS

The possible parameters are:

RefNo : The ORC Reference Number of the certificate (eg. ESP00003507, only if the certificate is known)
CountryId : The country abbreviation (eg ESP)
Family : The family of certificates. Possible values are

  • "ORC" for regular certificates
  • "NS" for non-spinnaker certificates
  • "DH" for double-handed certificates
If not specified, Family parameter value defaults to "ORC" (return regular certificate).

YachtName : The name of the boat (eg. OXYGONON)
SailNo : The sail number (eg. GRE-70)
dxtName : The data file name (eg. E9825.dxt).
ext: The format of the boat data
"rms" (the default) with return a rms (fixed record length) file.
"json" will return a json (javascript object notation) file
"csv" will return a csv (comma delimited values) file.

This web service will always return a file as result, containing ONE (ONLY the first of a multi-row result set) boat (or none, if the criteria are not met).

All the parameters above are optional. They can also be used in conjunction.

The "%" character can by used as a wildcard in the YachtName, SailNo, dxtName parameters (use "%%" if testing from the browser address bar).

The url accepts both GET & POST requests.

Examples:
https://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll?action=DownBoatRMS&SailNo=GRE-016&Family=DH&ext=json
https://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll?action=DownBoatRMS&YachtName=OXYG%%&CountryId=GRE&ext=rms
https://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll?action=DownBoatRMS&YachtName=OXYG%%&SailNo=%%-70
https://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll?action=DownBoatRMS&RefNo=ESP00002531&ext=json

To use the web service to query the ORC database for the rating data of the currently active certificates for a country:

https://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll
The url above will provide summary information of boat rating records for each country in xml format, including the date and time of the last update.

To download a specific's country rating use the following query:
https://data.orc.org/public/WPub.dll?action=DownRMS&CountryId=[country abbreviation]&Family=[family abbreviation]&ext=[format]
Country abbreviations (3-letter string) are available in the xml summary mentioned above.
Family parameter may be "ORC", "NS" or "DH" (see above). Format parameter may be "rms" (default), "json" or "csv" (see boat data format above).