DB table & fields documentation is brilliant - Thank you!! Is there any documentation on the indexing of the fields and tables?
Before I buy I'd like to know how easy & efficient my queries are going to be. For example I know can write a query to pull out the details of the last 3 races for each of the runners in a race and see the race going & race distance, etc... but without decent indexing this could be 'relatively slow'. It looks like I would have to use the horse name(since no unique horse id) and sort by race date descending limit 1, 3, this gives me the race_ids of the prev 3 races and then lookup directly. Is the DB indexed by horse name, date, or anything? Obviously I could copy the tables and create my own indexed versions(indexed according to my own needs) but I thought I'd ask so I know how efficient my queries will be or how much work I need to do.
It doesn't look like there is a unique horse_id. Is horse name unique over the full history of the database, can I be sure that looking at all history for 'horse name' is exactly the same 'horse name' across all records in the DB? Can horses have the same name as a horse that is now retired/dead? Would I have to check the foaling date every time I lookup on horse name?
Thanks and look forward to working with the data! I've scraped races from 2006 through present, including getting the cards every day, but a site changes their html the data then becomes unreliable and it's just not worth the hassle anymore so I'm up for paying for it!!
