Arthur Fuller
artful at rogers.com
Sun Jun 26 11:13:33 CDT 2005
You ask a couple of smart questions here. I should point out however that some articles at least do go "out of print". For example, my SQL Tips at builder.com go virtually "out of print" rather quickly (i.e. the URL you receive that points to them goes obsolete in a week or three). However, they are changing that so stuff will be retrievable for a long time. Next, you have the issue of multiple authors on a single book or article. You may have to distinguish the principal author from the others. Finally, let's take a case from my own sordid past in which I worked as part of a team on a book about an O-O language. I wrote three of the approximately 20 chapters, and had no part in the writing of anything else in the book. Should those 3 instances be regarded as "articles"? In a way they are closer to articles than to authorship of the entire book. Finally, the problem with using a pair of tables (Books and Mags) is that before you're done, a third medium will emerge (DVDs, say), and that will mean that you need to add a table at minimum. In light of this, my preference would be to create a table PublicationTypes, containing these three entries to start, and then have a single table containing the facts about the publications, and finally an Authors table containing the names of the authors of the various publications, perhaps also with a flag denoting "Principal author". This would enable "SQL: Access to SQL Server" to have either two principal authors or none, in addition to any number of ancillary authors. That's how I would model it, anyway. HTH, Arthur -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Susan Harkins Sent: June 23, 2005 2:28 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Normalizing issue This is really getting much more complicated than I had planned. Now I have to figure out how to deal with books versus articles. :) I thought about one table that id's each publication as a book, article, etc. but I have one problem. Books are usually in or out of print and that just doesn't apply for articles. If I use a Yes/No for InPrint, then I've got records when an inappropriate value -- No for magazines isn't really correct. I could use a tri-state Yes/No I guess, and put Null to work, but ug... I can have a separate table that stores only book InPrint field. Or, I can just use two different tables, one for books, for mags. Susan H. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Dettman Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 1:23 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD] Normalizing issue <<OK -- so you're relating the pen name table to the member name and then relating the book table to the pen name table?>> Yes. Jim. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Susan Harkins Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 1:13 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Normalizing issue OK -- so you're relating the pen name table to the member name and then relating the book table to the pen name table? -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Dettman Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 1:10 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD] Normalizing issue Slight correction: tblMembers MemberID MemberName DateCreated tblPenNames PenID MemberID PenName DateCreated Bio tblBooks BookID PenID Jim. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Susan Harkins Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 12:58 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Normalizing issue I've been considering this, this morning and I think what I've finally come up with is this: A member name -- that's their real name -- which will relate to their books. I "think" I will add a pen name field to the book table -- if they wrote the name under another name, it'll be there for searches, write-up's, whatever. But, there's only going to be one pen name for each book, so I think it's safe to do this. What do you think? Susan H. Since it's a writer's database, a separate *table* for pen names makes a lot of sense. Some writers use multiple pen names, so creating a pseudonym table is the safest way to handle that and relate it to the writer's actual name. You could always use the real name as the default when filling in a pen name. Charlotte Foust -----Original Message----- From: Susan Harkins [mailto:ssharkins at bellsouth.net] Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 8:43 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Normalizing issue If it isn't a middle or maiden name, what is it? This gets even more tricky with non-English names where "last" names can get really confusing. I generally provide a field for first, middle, and last name and make it the responsibility of the user to enter the appropriate value in the appropriate field. The rules for parsing this can become so draconian, that it hardly seems worth the work to do anything else. ========I'm in the middle of creating a database (pro bono) for a writer's organization. It's a simple deal and will require little work -- but this is already cropping up. These people will want their "writing" names with their publications -- I'm thinking about just adding one more field to store their "pen name" or whatever -- but then that becomes a nuisance if their name and professional name are the same -- gotta fill in both or allow for the blanks and go find the real name -- such a nuisance -- I think at this point the middle name is the best solution -- Susan H. -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com