CATO Database

[ShaneCarson]

What exactly is all of this I am seeing about CATO databases?

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by ShaneCarson

What exactly is all of this I am seeing about CATO databases?

Assuming that you're new to OOTP (based on the forum you posted this in ), it's nothing that you need to worry about. But since you asked...

Jeff Cato was a member of this community about 2-3 years ago, during the time when OOTP5 and OOTP6 were being released. Those versions of the game did not track detailed historical information for leagues - they had the Almanacs, but that was it.

So Jeff created a mod called Catobase, which looked like this. Running it at the end of every season allowed you store all sorts of long-term information that OOTP did not remember: career fielding stats, franchise draft histories, lists of each team's starting players at every position, and more. It also calculated and stored information that OOTP knew nothing about, such as Win Shares, Similarity Scores, and the Black and Grey Ink Tests.

In particular, Cato became an indispensable tool for online leagues in the OOTP6 days. But Jeff left the community for personal reasons around the time OOTP6.5 was released, and stopped updating the program. Then the next version of the game - OOTP2006 - was a complete rewrite, rendering Cato completely unusable for all leagues that made the jump to the newest version. Worse, since Catobase was a third-party mod that was never supported by Markus, no attempt was made to allow the importing of Cato data into OOTP2006 for leagues that did make that jump.

This became a deal breaker for many OOTP6 online leagues: many declared that their history was too valuable to them to lose, and that therefore, however nice the other new features of OOTP2006/2007 were, they would not upgrade their leagues until a way was found to let them retain that history within the new version. Since every online league represents (roughly) 20-30 potential customers, this was a significant portion of the customer base that was effectively refusing to buy the new games.

Thus was born this summer's attempt to create a conversion tool for Cato data. Markus decided that if someone could take Cato information (currently stored in Access databases) and convert it into CSV files in the same format that the Lahman historical database already uses - which OOTP can already import - he would tweak that import code to allow the game to bring in Cato information like it was back-filling a historical league. Ryan W., another member of the community, created the tool that dumped the Cato data into CSV format, and so Markus spent the last little while coding the importer for it. The result of that effort is included in OOTP8, and is what is creating all of the conversation at the moment.

There. Is that more than you ever wanted to know about the origins of Catobase?

- Kai

[Bonedwarf]

That post should be made a sticky IMO. Excellent potted history.

I miss Catobase. That was a great program. Half the reason I like OOTP (and baseball for that matter) is all the stats and Cato was great.

[ShaneCarson]

Thank you very much Kai. That was about as thorough as anyone could have been. I felt like an idiot when I was reading about the new version and everyone was talking about CATO this and CATO that. Thanks for helping me out!