I seem to spend half my life programming racing stuff and there is one special requirement which costs me more time than anything else. The requirement is to match up the different versions of information which you get from different places. I get data from TABs, various results sites, etc and there is no uniform way to represent names, courses, jockeys, etc. One horse will be called Sheepshacker (NZ) by the TAB and Sheepshacker by a results site. It will be racing at Ellerslie or New Zealand or perhaps it will be at Broadmeadow or Newcastle. The Jockey can be Ms E Wright, E Wright or Eileen Wright or quite possibly the wrong jockey entirely. You don't realise how bad the standard of data is on the net until you try to match it all up.
Still, if it was easy anybody could do it couldn't they? :-)

KV