As some of you may have noticed, I know Microsoft Word very well. Except for VBA and Macro programming (curs'em two!), I can manage excellent documents, containing personally designed styles, and TOCs that I customised myself, sometimes bulleted.
I know less of Excel, but can manage PivotTables and PivotCharts. In PowerPoint I can create very nice presentations, and even in Publisher I can forge a Biblical book in Hebrew.
In Access, however, there's much I want to do. I know how to create tables, forms and reports, but no matter how many manuals I've read (Microsoft Access 2003 Inside Out, for instance) - I never managed them.
I've recently tried to create a database of all my writings, I've got an unfinished play, a dialogue, and 47 poems - ten which are a series of sonnets, five which are sonnets as an impression of another poem of mine, and four which are Psalms. I also have Hebrew poetry, with several psalms, two seperate poems and maybe a Biblical book to add later.
Some of these poems require formatting of far more than simple text capabilities (so they can't be a field), and stuff which WordPad can't deal with. Instead of using DOC, I'll need to manage with WKS (Works's format), and use that as the simplest format that will support my writings.
Some of the poems have footnotes and endnotes (simple to do with Works), and some have formatting that requires
My question is, how the HELL do I design this database, and how can queries help me with it? My current design contains only tables, and the field sorting is in the format:
<fieldname> (<data type> - <description>)
Writing Types:
1) № (AutoNumber); 2) TypeName (text - the type of the writing); 2) Desc (memo - the description of the Writing Type).
Writings:
1) № (AutoNumber); 2) WritingType (reference to "[Writing Types].TypeName" - the type of the writing); 3) WritingTitle (text - the title of the writing); 4) WritingPreface (memo - a preface to the work; notes on formatting, if needed, are to be placed here); 5) Writing (OLE - insert the writing here in 'wps' format); 6) WritingReview (memo - a review of the work).
How's my design? I know that a serious database with proper search capabilities can't contain just two tables, one of them which is barely used. I know that in Word's Master Document I've been using this far, I've had one hell of an organising hazard, with sonnets being a seperate group, and Psalms being remade - which itself constitutes an individual category of "direct impression", as well as works of mine which cross-refer to others. Access is supposed to handle these things, but how do I do this?
JH
Edited: Proofing.
[ July 15, 2005, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
Damn, you people don't like databases, huh?
Posted by NinjaBirdman (Member # 7114) on :
The only database stuff I've done is online, though that doesn't seem like what you're trying to do. It'd be fairly easy to take your database and output each writing to an asp page, and link them all together. All the formatting would be done in html, which should be easy enough.
I don't know much about working with db's offline though. Never really had a reason to.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Don't store binary data in databases, particularly not wimpy ones like Access.
Store the formatted files in the filesystem, and store the location in the database.
And since all you're really storing are arelational records (type would be a useful table if relational integrity with it were important, but in your case it isn't particularly), the use of a database is only appropriate insofar as it provides other benefits (ease of search, ease of backup, et cetera).
It sounds like you'd be much more comfortable with the information in excel.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Russell's entirely right. If you're going to use Access for this, you're going to have an issue with formatting. To get around it, you're better off saving each poem as its own file, then adding a field to the database table that points to the file location.
But since all of the data you're tracking can be tracked in a single table, there's no real reason to use Access for this. Use Excel instead -- and if you need a pretty form front-end for your data entry, set up InfoPath as a forms designer. (Except that you shouldn't need a pretty form front-end, since the file location and name information can be populated automatically.)
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
THe actual content is stored in documents, so maybe just stick to a Master Document is MS-Word or something in OO?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
You could use a Word MD, too, provided that you don't have literally thousands of programs.
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
One programme, many poems. I am currently keeping them in a list on a single document I planned in Outline View.
It'll be around 50 short, small DOC files, otherwise - so I think a MD isn't worth it just yet.