Library 202- Assignment 2: Database Design

The 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.

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