Saul Fernandez e-Portfolio - Introduction



Library 202- Assignment 2: Database DesignThe concept of the database that I have created in DB/TextWorks was to organize my music CD collection in a manner that would not only make it easier to locate an artist, but also to have and maintain a series of records on file for future reference and storage. When presented with this task of creating a database for my music collection, I was excited. I have over 300 CDs in my collection and the opportunity to organize my music was something I always wanted to do (and needed to do, I might add) for a long time. For the purposes of this assignment, I created forty-one records, the entire letter of artists that began with the letter B in alphabetical order. There were two main purposes of creating my music database. One was to have a written record of every CD for inventory purposes and secondly to organize my collection in a way where I could easily find my desired music plus the ability to use the query to search for certain genres of music. Before the actual construction of the database, I asked myself what types of information about each CD needs to be present in the database. I had to determine which information would be beneficial to me or anyone else when looking at the database. I determined that I needed the basic information of identity including artist name, name of album, etc. But I also wanted a couple of fields that would help me distinguish the music as well. Identifying the genre was important for querying and the notes section was great to have to add any particular noteworthy facts that could be informative for the user.As far as the standard in terms of content and structure of the records, the information record will describe the type of music, identity of artist, and timeframe of album release. These pieces of information should be sufficient to locate the desired music. The key fields include ID (numerical order 1, 2, 3…), name of artist, album title, year of release, number of tracks, record company, genre, and notes. In the case of my CD collection, I have multiple CDs of a particular artist (i.e. Beatles), but the music is distinguished from each other by the listings of the name of the album and year of release. All of the attributes that I needed for identification are present. All fields are mandatory with the exception of the Notes field. The first seven fields are critical because they describe and distinguish the music CDs. The Notes field was used just for my own sake in order to remind me of certain tracks that I like are on a particular album. In regards for a new user, the notes are also beneficial in describing in more detail of an album. For instance, the notes field can let the new user know if the album is a live recording or a greatest hits compilation, or a double album. The user may not disseminate that information just from the album title field or number of tracks field. Many fields can be repeatable. For example, I have seven or eight Beatles albums, so the artist field repeats those seven or eight times. The same can be said for the record company as in the Beatles case, EMI Records produced most of the Beatles’ albums. It is also possible to have a repeatable field in the ‘Year of Release’ field as an artist may have release multiple albums during the same year. This is the case for Bad Company’s albums Run with the Pack and Burnin’ Sky, both released in 1976.The standards of each field are very much straightforward. For the first field, the selection of ID was made and the Auto Number variable was selected. The records show a numerical sequence starting with 1, 2, 3, and so on. This was a logical field to begin with as the counting of the CDs will show the grand total number with the last record. The second field was determined to be the Artist field. Word indexing was selected as the indexing choice because I wanted to let the user have the freedom to be various versions of the artist’s name in order for query to find artist. In the example of Bad Company, a user could enter “bad company” or “Bad Co” and still be able to successfully find the artist. The less restrictive in the indexing, the better results will be obtained. The same principles of the artist field, as far as indexing goes, also applies to the ‘Name of Album’ field. Once again the limits are endless and restrictions will show empty search results if field is narrowed too much. The ‘Year of Release’ field is very elementary to understand. The choice of numeral was selected as only numbers to represent years are valid for this field. Like the ’Year of Release’ field, the ‘Number of Tracks’ field is also very straightforward. Numerical values are the only values here to make sense as the number of tracks on the CD are counted. The field for the Record Company has been chosen for Word Index just like the Artist and Album Name fields. With just the 41 records that I entered, there are about a dozen different record company names. It would make more sense to allow more freedom in typing in some of or the entire record name than to create a validation list of all of the record companies that could be thought of. New record companies, especially really small independent ones, spring up or go under all of the time. The database creator would get exhausted updating the validation list in this case. The genre field was one of the most important fields in the database collection. This field will be used a lot in query searches. The genre field describes the type of music and categorizes it. In this instance, I created a validation list for the genre field. I created about six to seven genres in my validation list. Some CDs were very clear in categorizing the music. Some were not so clear. The great thing about the validation list is that I could choose multiple genres when creating the data structure. For example, I chose ‘Alternative’ and ‘Classic Rock’ for the David Bowie CD. Bowie’s music could be considered under both genres. For Blondie, the validation list displayed both ‘Pop’ and ‘Punk’ as the genres. The nice feature about this is that if a user wanted to compile a playlist or create a CD of a genre, it would be very easy to do. The user could query all of the ‘Alternative’ CDs or all of the ‘Rap’ CDs. Also by labeling some of the CDs in multiple genres, the user could decide if they want David Bowie in their ‘Classic Rock’ mix or their ‘Alternative’ mix. This system gives them the option to do so and it also “fills in the cracks.” By labeling multiple genres, an artist won’t be omitted in a search because they were rigidly placed in only one genre. Lastly, the ‘Notes’ field is an appropriate field to be the last on the list. This field was constructed with Word Indexing. The possible words and combination of words are endless and allowing Word Indexing makes the most sense. Some records have entries in the notes field and some do not. It just depends on the creator’s discretion. For the most part, the note fields were filled when describing the CD as a live album, double album, greatest hits, etc. There are a handful of these types of CDs in my collection and this field is a perfect place to denote those specific descriptions. The note field is also a good place to note favorite songs that come from a particular album.In reviewing the database fields and the creation of rules, I only see the benefit of using a rule with the ‘Year of Release’ field. The rule that the user would have to use in that instance is to enter XXXX four digits for the year.Screenshots ................
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