[thelist] plea for assist on db, pls...

jsWalter jsWalter at torres.ws
Mon Jul 14 11:26:14 CDT 2003


I am a neophyte database person.

I've installed and maintained them, but never built a schema for one.

I am trying to build a database schema that will house all the info I have
on some 30,000 old radio programs (like The Shadow (from the 30's, 40's and
50's), and the CBS Radio Mystery Theater (from the mid 70's and early
80's) ).

I have a listing of some 200+ Series titles (not by far the entire list)

The Series Data I need to track...
 - Series Name       Shadow
 - Genre             Mystery/Horror/Adventure/SciFi/Comedy/Drama/History
 - Network           NBC Blue
 - Lead Actor
 - Supporting Actors
 - Sponsors
 - AuditionDate
 - First Show Date
 - Last Show Date
 - Total Number Episodes
 - Number of Lost Episodes

Each Show may have between 20 and 5000 episodes

Does each show get it's own table to store its episodes in?

Or do I create one massive EPISODES table and each item is then keyed to the
show ID and/or abbreviation?

The Episode data I need to track is...

 - Genre             Mystery/Horror/Adventure/SciFi/Comedy/Drama/History
 - Show Name         Suspense
 - Episode Title     Mr. Diogenes
 - Episode Number    370 (NOT necessarily sequencal -don't ask)
 - Episode Date      1/26/1950
 - plot description
 - plot rating
 - Director          ???
 - Writer/s          ???
 - Stars             Ozzie & Harriet
 - Network           NBC Blue
 - Run Time          ???
 - Sound Quality     Excellent/High/Good/Poor/Bad/Horrible
 - complete          is any of the show cut off, beginning or end
 - Sponsor           Camel Cigarettes
 - Encoding rate:    32k/64k/96k/128/
 - Phono             mono/stereo
 - Encoder:          Walter Torres <walter at torres.ws>
 - Source:           www.torres.ws/otr


I know that the people involved should have their own table...

Data to be tracked for each person:
  - Name, known as   Cary Grant
  - Name, original   Archibald Leach
  - Date of Birth
  - Place of Birth
  - Date of Death
  - Biography
  - Link to fan club web site

And of course, all this needs to be link and relational (somehow)

If you drop over to the IMDB.com (internet movie database) you'll get an
idea of what I'm looking to do.

This has been a project on my desk to the past 3 years. I've had 8 people
"volunteer" to design a schema for this, but none have followed through.

So I need to beg the cast and crew here if someone wouldn't mind "lending me
a hand"

I have no idea what I really need to do to make this work.

I can build the database (I'm using mySQL), I can build the interface
between the database and the user (via Browser with either PHP or Perl) and
I can build the Browser screens for data entry and search/browsing (d/HTML,
CSS and JavaScript).

The proper schema is beyond me.

This is not a paying project. This is a hobby to me and some 6 thousand
friends I know, but there are more.

I hope I'm not asking for too much. I'm just very aware of my imitations and
would rather not see this thing have a short life because I couldn't design
a robust enough schema.

Your wisdom would be appreciated.

Walter



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