Tennis is a global sport which requires fast exchange of information world-wide with high levels of quality and reliability. A rapidly increasing amount of tennis data is being sent electronically between a wide array of tennis organisations, service providers, and other stakeholders in the sport. These exchanges are done on both a routine and ad-hoc basis, consisting of a diverse range of data including events calendars, tournament information and results, entry lists, analysis, rankings, and player details. This is not confined to just one or two categories but occurs at every level of the sport, from recreational to elite, under 12's to 90+ Seniors, including other disciplines such as Wheelchair, and across all levels of competition, from Grand Slams down to grassroots club events.
The problem is that currently there is little uniformity in how that data is being exchanged - the formats of this data and the mechanisms used for its transport vary widely. This has a huge impact on how easily, quickly, and efficiently information is shared.
Using a wide range of different databases and information systems, each with their own custom or proprietary data storage and export formats, invariably means that for each new incoming or outgoing data feed, significant development is required to create an appropriate system to process this information and to handle its transfer. Maintaining these data feeds takes large amounts of time and effort.
TODS has been developed by the International Tennis Federation as part of an open and collaborative initiative to improve the access to and use of data within the global tennis community.