At 08:17 AM 12/29/2008, you wrote:
>I am rather fresh to MySQL and am trying to fix and update a website -
>modifying from just plain html to css, php and MySQL. I'm working on
>FreeBSD 7.0, MySQL 5.1,30, PHP5.28 & Apache 2.2.11.
>I need figure out how to set up (design) a database of books which gets
>rather complicated since I must implement searches of the database based
>on key words including categories, ISBN numbers, authors, dates, etc. etc.
>The problem is how to deal with duplication of the data - In other words,
>a book may have not only several authors, but also several ISBN numbers,
>fall under several categories, different dates (year of publication),
>several publishers & I probably haven't yet seen all of the variables.
>I certainly do not want to enter the same book many times with just one of
>each different variable. I suppose that one way to do it is to enter one
>row with a lot of columns to store all the the different variables; a
>search would probably be simpler this way if the search criteria are
>limited to 1 word. Or would it? I rather do think that the search should
>be limited to 1 word anyway. :-)
>If the search would be for a category, for instance, would it make sense
>to use a column for category with an input of keywords for the different
>categories?; rather than a column for each category or another table of
>categories?
>Multiple publication years could probably be different row entries since
>there would not be more than 2 or would be a different publisher,
>language, or country.
>I really with to K.I.S.S this undertaking and would appreciate any help or
>suggestions.
>If it helps, you can see the site as it is at present
>http://www.ptahhotep.com - but since it is rather messed up at the moment,
>it is best viewed with IE. Some of the links and jscripts don't work on
>FireFox.
>TIA,
>PJ
You can of course simplify things by putting the alternate ISBN number in
the description of the book and put a full text index on it. Same with
alternate authors etc.. It would be a catch all for items that you don't
have columns for.
I think the best line of attack is to work from an existing model. Why
re-invent the wheel?
There are a few bookstore/library schemas here:
http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/
http://www.edumax.com/oracle-basics-06-normalization-and-sample-schema-creation-normalization-and-sample-schema-creation.html
Mike
