The RPD Explained

The Race Profile Database is a feature of GTX that substantially speeds up a system that is analysing the vast amount of historical data that has been imported into GTX. Without the Race Profile Database (RPD) being created and activated, a system would need to scan every race file on your computer to check if it contained any horses that qualify for selection according to the rules of that system.

When the RPD is created or updated, it records race-related information of every race contained within the date range specified. It takes note of such details as Race Distance, Field Size, Class Value (Cval), Class, Going, Track; in fact all of the parameters you see on the Race parameters panel of the System Developer.

When you run a system with use RPD activated, the System Developer compares the rules you have entered into the Race parameters of the system against the RPD, and further investigates only those races that match the Race parameter rules, thereby saving you a lot of time.

The more defining, or limiting, the Race parameters are, the quicker the analysis will be, as only those races described in the Race parameters section of the system will be analysed, rather than the whole historical database of races on your computer.

Consider the following two rules:

     Race Rules:
     Include if Distance between 0 and 1350
     Include if Weight Rest = WFA

There may be only 400 such races in the entire Race Profile database covering almost eleven years, so the System Developer will analyse only those 400 races, taking only a matter of seconds as opposed to a much longer time an analysis of the whole database could take, depending upon the amount of races contained in it, and the speed of your computer.

This option is disabled when you have specified using loaded races for Systems and Groups.

If the Use RPD option is used, the System Developer can analyse only the races that have been loaded to the Race Profile database, therefore it is imperative to keep the RPD up-to-date. Basically what this entails is that when you first import historical data into GTX, you create the database. Each time you add further historical data, you need to update the RPD.

How to Create and Update the RPD

The most common introduction to the use of the Race Profile Database would occur following the importation of historical data files for use in conjunction with the System Developer.

Once the data has been imported, you would then proceed to setup the RPD to cover the date range of the imported data.

Start by opening the System Developer, then click the Edit RPD button in the Options pane of the System Developer window. The System Race Profile Database box will open.

If you had just imported data from the last four years of race meetings, say from January 2007 to October 2010, you would first make sure that the radio button indicates Selected dates, then use the calendars to set the start date and the end date of the data, in this case from 1 January 2007 to 31 October 2010. Then click the Update button

In this particular situation, with four years of data, the setup needs to query and categorise over 65,000 files (~1 GB), so this could take a while. It would be best to start this process before you have lunch or an afternoon nap so that you are not sitting idle waiting for it to finish. When the process has finished, click the Exit button, and don't forget to select the use RPD option in the System Developer's Options pane before running your systems.

You will also need to update the RPD each time you import historical data into GTX, or any time you want to add to the RPD the daily meetings you have downloaded and which have been updated with the twice weekly dividends files which contain all post race information. Fortunately, you do not need to build the whole database each time, just use the calendars and the Update button to add the extra meetings to the Race Profile Database. For example, you had already imported the data and created the RPD for the date range 1 January 2007 to 31 October 2010, and now you have meetings for all of November 2010. Use the calendars to set the Start date of 1 November 2010 and the End date of 30 November 2010, and click Update.