There are two tables in the wireless database relating to names - PlayerNames and PlayerNumbers. PlayerNames is set up by the scoring program before wireless scoring is started. BridgePal uses this table to find the player name when a player number is entered. The PlayerNumbers table contains a record for each position (N,S,E,W) for each table. When BridgePal looks up a player number it writes the player number and the corresponding name into the appropriate record of the PlayerNumbers table. If the player name could not be found then that particular field is left blank. If no player number is entered on BridgePal then the number field in the PlayerNumbers record is also left blank.
A new player name can be added in EBUScore part way through the session and manually assigned to a table. Then, when the "Write Names" button is clicked, EBUScore writes the player name into the appropriate record of the PlayerNumbers table. However, it clears the "Number" field and also it doesn't write the new number/name into the PlayerNames table. When displaying names, BridgePal always uses the Number field to lookup the player name in the PlayerNames table. However, because the Number field is now blank it will not find it and will display NoName. Even if the Number field had been set correctly by EBUScore it would still not find it because the PlayerNames table has not been updated.
BridgePal Server displays the correct name because it just displays whatever is currently in the "Name" field in the PlayerNumbers table - it does not do a lookup based on the player number because it has no facility to enter new names or change the names that have been entered. It just assumes BridgePal has mapped the player number to the correct name.
If BridgePal is used with BridgeScore it will display the names correctly if a new player is entered on BridgeScore. That's because BridgeScore does update the PlayerNames table. I can't advise whether that's a sufficient reason to change to BridgeScore. It is easy to use and handles pairs events and multiple teams. It does not handle swiss pairs or swiss teams events.
Note that BridgePal also supports name lookup using the national database (BMPlayerDB.mdb). If it's the case that a player has an EBU number but not a club id then they could enter their EBU number on BridgePal (providing BMPlayerDB.mdb has previously been set up from EBUScore and the BCS name source option has been set to allow lookup in the national database as well as the PlayerNames table).
Note: I just did a further test with EBUScore. If you manually assign a player in EBUScore, click on "Write Names", and that player has an EBU Number, then the EBU number is written to the Number field in the PlayerNumbers table. However, if the player just has a club id but no EBU Number, then the club id is not written to PlayerNumbers (which is as described above)
