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Monday, November 12, 2007

DRT on steroids?

I'm thinking that the steroids scandal is about to spread to the Data Request Tool. This venerable tool has been around for years, and all of a sudden, it's as sprightly as a young colt.

Seriously, it seems faster now. Much faster. I don't have any comparison data, but the difference is clear. It is just lovely to see that "Download Data File" button appear so quickly.

I'm guessing it had something to do with the DRT downtime last week (which had me in withdrawal) and the new "tsv" extension on the files to be downloaded.

So, thanks to whomever is responsible for the improvement.

Now for the very small and unreasonably cranky complaint. I'm sure that .tsv is a real file extension used by some programs, but it is not in the Microsoft lexicon, so none of their programs know how to import it. It doesn't make too much difference in Excel, but the import wizard in Access won't let you import a .tsv file. Of course, the old .tmp extension wouldn't import, either, so my automated tools are already set up to rename the file with a .txt extension.

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