hello new friends.

I just completed two years of school for front end graphic and web
design.
I have a good job, and am happy, but am seeing lots of potential
clients slip away because I did not learn database design and
integration.

My hosting offers multiple domains and sql databases, and I am not a
web idiot, but an amateur. I do not want to learn three new programming
languages just to make a simple database form and method of server
storage. The books are huge, on this topic and the web is vast...

I simply want to collect first name, last name, dj name, and type of
DJ: vinyl, cd, mp3, any and email

for a list.

Where should I begin.???

is there software specifically for making a custom database,
incorporating the custom form into my html/ asp site, and storing it on
a server, in an easy to acces formula?


Google led me to you, now please point me for a quick and easy way to
start developing databases.

I can't offer money but I do have music I can share legally off of this
site: www.therecordpool.com

technorganic wrote:

Come on in, the water's fine.

The nice thing about starting from scratch is that almost anything you do
will be a learning experience, so the best thing is to dive in.

Personally I would recommend starting with one of those desktop tools that
gets you started easily. MS Access is very popular for that. Some will
warn you that this product may teach you some bad habits, and they will be
right, but only barely so. If you have a knack for it you'll begin to
gravitate away from the bad and seek out the good.

Run a Google "Rules of Normalization". Read it thoroughly, try setting up
some databases, then go read it again, and keep asking lots of questions!

--
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
(Ken)nneth@(Sec)ure(Dat)a(.com)

"technorganic" <technorganic (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Creator <http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator> and
Microsoft's Visual Web Developer Express Edition
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/>. If you are running
only Microsoft operating systems and servers choose Visual Web
Developer. If you run a mix of OS's and servers choose Studio Creator.

These products greatly simplify the task of writing a web based
application to access a database and you will be able to get the
sample in the tutorial working fairly quickly. However, you are really
learning client side scripting and server programming in addition to
databases so creating a real application is a significant task. It
would be at least another two years at school if you decided to learn
it that way.

technorganic wrote:
Despite the learning curve, for me php and mysql would still be the way
to go. It may look daunting but a couple of good books really could get
you well on the way. Plus the online community for these items is
unbelievable.

You could also think about teaming up with someone who already has this
expertise.

In answer to your example question, regardless of what way you intend
to go, you need (at a guess) 3 tables. They could look like this:

contacts(contact_id*,f_name,I_name,email)
deejays(contact_id*,dj_name*,media_id*)
media(media_id*,media)

you could put all that dj info into the contact table, but it's more
flexible this way. Also, maybe a dj uses more than 1 kind of media,or
uses more than 1 stage name. In either case, they'd simply take up an
extra row in the dj table.

And then you just need to construct some forms to populate each of the
tables.

"technorganic" <technorganic (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Funny you should say that. I was a database consultant in the 1990s, but I
saw a lot of clients slip away because I didn't know anything about graphic
design and web technology. People were saying "database experts are a dime
a dozen." These days, I guess you have to know a lot about everything.

I'm going to start by directing you to a web site that summarizes modeling
and design concepts rather well. I disagree with a few of the things it
says, but not enough to quibble with the authors. Here it is:

http://www.utexas.edu/its/windows/da.../overview.html

If you can learn from something as condensed as this, it beats reading a 200
page "Introduction" to the subject.

There is a LOT to data modeling and database design. But you CAN learn it a
little at a time. Much of what you will learn will contradict thinking
habits that have served you well in the arena of web design. It's worth
struggling through that. Better minds than mine have wrestled with the
problem of cross mapping web concepts and relational concepts, and they
have met with limited success.

I also agree with Kenneth's approach: dive right in. There's nothing wrong
with MS Access, except that it will persuade you that you don't need to
know some concepts that you WILL need to know in order to master SQL and to
deal with massive concurrent transactions (typical of web based
applications).

HTH.

zac.carey (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
given that media is just the type of media, I would forego using the
pseudokey media ID. (ID keys can be useful, but they are often
overused.)

change the tables as follows:
deejays(contact_id*,dj_name*,media_type)
media(media_type { optionally add a long description } )

and also add Froeign key constraints. These ensure that you cannot
assign a media type to a DJ that does not exist in the media table.

HTH,
ed

Ed Prochak wrote:
Fair enough - although note that if any given dj performs (under the
same name) using more than one media_type then media_type will need to
form part of the primary key, so:

deejays(contact_id*,dj_name*,media_type*)

* = PRIMARY KEY