News and Comment on Orders of Battle.com

Jul

1

Site News 7

July 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Regular visitors to the site might have noticed that there has been a lack of updates recently.

This is due to technical issues with Merge Replication whereby the machines have to be on the same domain to handle the permissions needed and as I am in Belgium at the moment and as I have had to rebuild my PCs here, that means that currently the machines here are not on the same domain as the db server so replication is not working right now.

I am returning home tomorrow so replication should be up and running by the end of this week.

In the meantime, I have been concentrating on completing the redevelopment of the windows client application that I use to input data into the database. I am happy to say that development is just about complete and the rewritten forms seem to be working well. I will deploy the new version of the application this week.

As a result of the server crash in May, the db server and the web server are currently running on the same machine. As I mentioned on tech-crm.com recently, I have ordered the components to build a new web server and I hope to build it later this week.

The next piece of the jigsaw to be revised will be the web site itself to incorporate the new tables and change the google adsense code. I hope also to modify the design of this blog to match the look and feel of the ordersofbattle.com website more closely. ¼/p>

Jun

9

Work continues on the new data input user iterface, but the last form which will handle the data input and update of Unit sub-tables, ie Unit History, Appointments, Subordinates etc is still not complete, but is getting there. The new form follows a new design paradigm that I have not tried before, but it should be completed in a week or two.

Progress had been delayed owing to personal commitments and the server crash which meant that I had to spend quite a bit of time restoring all the websites etc.

In addition, I have had to move flats and will be returning back to Canada soon so I am also back in the job market as well.

The next step once the windows user interface is completed will be to modify the web site to display the various new tables such as Unit Wave and Unit Wehrkreis which will allow much more flexible handling of the relationships between German units and the Wave(s) and Wehrkreis associated with them.

Once that is done, I am hoping to turn my attention to two things:

In the longer term, I also hope to write a version of the user interface that will work on a PDA so that I can fix data issues when I see them!

I am intend to modify the web site to have appropriate pictures and graphics in order to make the web site more attractive and interesting.

I also want to write more background pages on the history of the various Armies to provide a suitable overview and to replace some of the Notes in the State Notes pages.

On the data front, the current emphasis is as follows:

One of the problems I face with data input right now is that I do not have access to my library so I am limited in what I can input. Once I have returned home, I will have more scope.

With regard to the German Army in World War II, there is a lot of useful information around and being published, but many useful series of books are still incomplete or just getting started, so a lot of information is available for some units but not others.

There is a very useful book on the horizon - The German Army Order of Battle for World War II, 1939-1945 - by William T McCroden to be published by Savas Beattie, which promises a weekly order of battle for the Wehrmacht for the whole war, but according to the publisher, its publication date has been put back. Therefore I am holding off inputting Superior Units for German divisions until I have it.

Therefore, right now I am concentrating on just inputting German commanders and staff officers into the database.

In the fullness of time, I hope to start inputting information on French and Russian units for World War II, as well as Hungarian, Italian and Romanian units.

I am also gathering sources for the British, US and German Armies for World War I as well. I will probably start with the British Commonwealth Army to start with.

So, my path is laid out, and it is probably far too ambitious, but one should have a goal!!  Â

May

24

Well, it’s been a hectic few weeks and during that time, this web log has been off air owing to a server crash.

First off, many apologies for the down time, it has been very frustrating in that I wanted to spend the time getting the site back up, but lots of things seemed to get in the way.

My main objective was obviously to get my ordersofbattle.com website back up and then worry about the other websites.

For those of you who may be interested in what happened, please check out my Tech-CRM blog for more details.

Mar

24

Site News 6

March 24, 2008 | 2 Comments

Well, it’s been a while since I commented here and not much has changed as far as the website goes as I have been concentrating on reworking the Windows Forms application that I use to input data into the database. Needless to say, this has had an inpact on my data input activities.

I started off by just modifying some forms to add some additional fields and as is usual with me, it has turned into a complete rewrite of my data input application.

The application I use to input data was ported to VB.NET from VB 6 about 6-7 years ago and quite a lot of the forms have not been heavily changed since that time. I have basically rewritten all the forms and added several new ones to take advantage of some of the new controls in .NET Framework 2.0 . I have almost finished, I only have the Unit Details form left to do that inputs data for Unit records such as Appointments, History etc.

Once the forms are done, I will then be able to input new data such as Corps, Roles, Directorates etc much more easily without having to use SQL. The new forms will allow me to input Wehrkreis and Wave information for German divisions for example.

The next task will be to modify the web site to publish the new data.

On the data input side, I am concentrating on German Divisional commanders and I am now up to 20 or so. I am also continuing to work away at Pre-1881 British Line Infantry Battalions. I have also made a start on Australian Light Horse Regiment assignments.

I am also continuing to input Rifle Volunteer Corps records for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and I am not far off from finishing every battalion of the Regiment including ones for 1914-1918.

On the book front, I hope to order the first two books of Veit Scherzer’s new series on German divisions in World War II. I have seen some sample pages and they look like a great complement to Tessin.

I also remain on the lookout for additional World War II Army Lists.

Jan

17

Site News 5

January 17, 2008 | 4 Comments

Well, things have been a bit quiet on the website front over the last few weeks, but there has been some activity in the background.

Currently, I am somewhat busy making changes to the Windows client user interface to fix bugs that have accumulated and make the application easier to use. I use Visual Studio 2005 as my main development tool and I am currently upgrading the application to use some of the new controls that came in with VS 2005.

I also hope to migrate the application to Visual Studio 2008 in the not so distant future.

I am also porting my development environment and the local copy of my database to a new PC with better performance than my laptop so that is taking some time.

Once the local database is fully operational on the new PC and I have a working copy of my client application again, then I will resume data updates of the site.

Upcoming changes for the application are forms to create and update Corps records which will make it a lot easier for me to maintain Corps records. Once that is done, I will add new matching pages to the website.

I also hope to make some minor changes to the adsense layout formats as well. 

A little further down the queue are forms and pages to maintain/view Unit Districts and Unit Waves for German units.

Dec

10

Research Update 7

December 10, 2007 | 2 Comments

Have now finally completed German Mountain Corps staffs and commanders and have also recently completed the same activity for German Korpsabteilungen (Corps Detachments) which are listed on the database under Infantry Corps although they were of divisional size. I hope to complete Border HQs next before moving on to Division sized units.

That still leaves a number of Corps-sized HQs to input such as Befehlshaber and Militarbefehlshaber but I am going to check those in Tessin before I start inputting them.

On the Commonwealth front, I am working my way through British Regiments of Foot as a way of providing a brief overviews of the history of British Regular Battalions before 1881. I am creating entries for 2nd Battalions of these regiments where they existed for completeness sake, but I am going to try not to get bogged down on the various foreign and ephemeral regiments that existed during this period. I am currently on E.

Coming up for the Commonwealth are Regimental assignments for Australian militia cavalry and armoured regiments courtesy of David Ryan who kindly sent me the information.

I am also currently in the process of assigning all Commonwealth officer appointments to a Directorate. This assignment is not yet visible in the website but should be in the not too distant future.

All British staff officers at every level of Headquarters were members of a specific staff branch. Some of these officer appointments were further organised by Directorate.

I have created Branch and Directorate records which will be associated with every Commonwealth officer appointment. This is to allow officers to be listed in the Appointments Tab in a coherent and understandable fashion and to give an idea of what the officer actually did.

Commanders of various units were not actually part of a branch per se as they were responsible for all staff branches that reported to them, but I have created a “branch” for commanders so that they are grouped at the start of the list as is proper.

Where I don’t know the actual Directorate, the officer is assigned to a dummy directorate for the branch as a whole, i.e. “General Staff”.

All in all, this should make it easier when viewing appointments at the War Office or GHQ level.

On the US side, I have input commanders and basic information for 6th and 7th Infantry Divisions and hope to start the 8th Infantry Division soon. Unfortunately, units which served in the Mediterranean and Pacific Theatres of Operations do not have the same amount of information available for them as do officers in the European Theatre of Operations.ÂÂ

Nov

20

Research Update 6

November 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Have now completed entering details of the Battalions of the ten Gurkha Regiments and have made some progress cataloguing the war-formed Indian Regiments and Indian State Forces battalions.

As part of my ongoing effort to provide at least a brief overview of the evolution of the British Regiments, I have returned to listing the Pre-1881 Regiments of the Line whose battalions are listed with the Unit Type of “Foot”. This will allow users to trace the regular battalions of the line back to thir origins between 1688 and 1815.

At some point, I will also add the Irish Regiments that were disbanded in 1922.

On the German front, I am still stuck on German Mountain Corps staff officers.

Oct

31

Site News 5

October 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Last night, I finally resolved a few technical issues that were interfering with the upgrade to version 1.0.7.8 of the web site and got the Unit Data and Person Data pages working properly.

The main change, as noted on the Site News page in ordersofbattle.com, is that the Unit Data and Person Data pages now work in a slightly different manner so that links in the hyperlink list which do not have any records associated with them, are now no longer displayed as hyperlinks but as text. This should make the pages easier to use as now users do not have the frustration of clicking on a link and seeing nothing there.

I have also added Unit Corps and Unit Forces links to that hyperlink list. This is to better manage the many-to-many relationship between a Force and a Unit and between a Corps and a Unit.

This release also lays the framework for many upcoming changes including Directorate and Branch for Appointments which will allow the page to organise Appointments by Branch and Directorate in the same framework used by Army Lists.

Oct

29

Site News 4

October 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment

There are some long promised changes ready to go live in the next day or two.

The main ones are that, as I mentioned before, the links in the Unit Data page will only be hyperlinks if there is data to be displayed in them, otherwise they will be plain text.

I have also removed Military District from the Listview in Unit Locations and replaced it with Province.

Finally I have added two more hyperlinks to the Unit Data page: Unit Corps and Unit Forces.

These two links are for Commonwealth units only and will show the Corps and Force records associated with the Unit record. 

While a Unit is typically only associated with one Corps, it is possible for units to be transfered between Corps when they convert to a new role or arm of service. For example, many infantry battalions were transfered to the Royal Artillery between 1935 and 1940 and were given to new titles. The Unit Corps page will make it easier to see the Corps associated with the unit before/after the conversion.

Similarly, in the case of Volunteer Battalions, many were associated with Line Regiments in 1881 but did not formally become part of the Corps until some years later and in some cases never as they were later associated with a different Corps.

The Unit Force page is designed to make it clear when a Unit was associated with a specific Force. Many British infantry battalions were 1st Line Territorial battalions in the First World War but were 2nd Line Territorial or War Formed battalions in the Second World War.

Similarly, many Canadian Militia battalions became part of the Canadian Active Service Force in 1939 and were then classified as Canadian Army (Active) in 1940 while others were never part of the Canadian Active Service Force and were later reclassified as Canadian Army (Reserve).

As you may gather from reading this, I do have plans to cover British and Commonwealth battalions in the First World War as well as the Second. This has long been an ambition of mine which is why I have started to cover the pre-1908 Volunteer Battalions and the pre-1881 Rifle Volunteer Corps Battalions.

This is starting to turn into a Research Update :)

Other changes to the website that are upcoming which I have already added to the database are as follows:

  1. Awards Page - British and Commonwealth Medals and Honours
  2. Corps Page - A page to group information on Corps which is now spread across Battalion histories and notes
  3. Unit Districts - Dates that a German unit is associated with a specific Wehrkreis which will allow users to see which units were supported/maintained by a Wehrkreis on a specific date
  4. Unit Wave - Dates that a German infantry division or regiment is part of a specific Wave (Welle). This will provide more flexibility than my current design which only lists two Wave numbers on the Unit record. Whebn German infantry divisions were reformed, they were usually reformed as part of a new Wave.

 I also hope to add better filter facilities to allow users to filter data displayed on certain pages to make it easier to find units or people.

Oct

29

Research Update 5

October 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Updates are only now getting back off the ground again after a bit of an interlude during several changes were made to the design which will be published shortly.

Have now completed the remaining regular Indian Regiments and will now move on to the Gurkhas and the War-formed Indian Regiments.

Am also working my way through German Mountain Corps staff officers.