Christopher Smith wrote:
On Aug 19, 2008, at 8:09 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
But a flat file approach is guaranteed to produce far more problems
in the long run than are possible with a relational structure, unless
that, too, has been improperly designed.
David,
You seem to have a lot of experience here. Assuming I'm running a school
music performance materials library of 500-700 pieces or so.
How would you suggest setting up the fields in a database (like
Filemaker) for instrumentation? Most of the rest is clear to me (your
points about composers and bios make a lot of sense.)
Would you say something like one field for instrumentation, and then
fill that field with the actual instruments? Or with the name of the
ensemble if it is a standard one? Or would you have a Piccolo field,
with yes or no or a number of parts, then on to the Flute 1, etc.?
Or am I still thinking flat file? (our library is presently an Excel
spreadsheet, and I tend to think that way!)
Our library contains concert band, jazz band, combo, and chamber music
in various combinations. Obviously for it to be more useful than the
present spreadsheet, it would have to be browseable by instrumentation.
How would that work with slightly differing instrumentations (like a lot
of concert band pieces?)
I'm not the David you're asking, but just to add another
opinion, I'm always willing to chip in.
For instrumentation, I'd suggest three different fields and
one set of fields built into each record. One would use a
verbal description: Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, Brass
Quintet, Full Orchestra, String Orchestra, String Quartet, etc.
The second field would be instrumentation based on the
standard orchestral instrumentation. I'm sure you could
devise a similar instrumentation code for bands.
The third field would include any non-standard instruments
included in the ensemble.
The set of fields built into each record would list all the
standard instruments used in concert bands, wind ensembles
and orchestras.
So people could do the preliminary search on the verbal
field, then browse through the differing instrumentation lists.
Having a separate field for each type of instrument might
prove helpful if you wanted to find all Concert Band works
which include an English Horn part, but that will take a
long time to get all the data entered, especially for those
works which don't list the instrumentation on the outside of
the score.
Those would be how I would do such a database, but I'm sure
there are other more experienced suggestions coming along
from others.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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