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BOOKS.MDB - Books database
BOOKS.MDB is a database for managing detailed information about a collection
of books. It was developed for a collection of mostly old used books, some collectible,
in varying conditions, and is thus somewhat geared toward that purpose. It has 100
records in it so you can see how it works and experiment with it.
Its tables are:
- Authors
- Bindings
- Books
- Condition
- Condition Modifiers
- Publishers
- Where published
- Rooms
- Walls
The fields of the main table BOOKS include:
- Book number
- Location
- Author
- Title
- Notes
- Publication year
- Publisher
- Where published
- Language
- Binding
- Condition
- Valuation
- Disposition
The database demonstrates the use of linked tables in one-to-many relationships
and has some sample search queries. You'll probably want to modify the database
for your own purposes, but this starting point could save some initial setup
time.
Downloads:
-
books2003mdb.zip for Microsoft Access 2003
- About 54 KB. The most recent version.
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books20mdb.zip for Microsoft Access 2.0
- About 67 KB. This is older and similar, but not identical to the other version.
It does have one report that the 2003 version doesn't have. It doesn't have
the MakeTable query mentioned in the Notes below.
-
Notes:
These are somewhat cryptic notes made to myself about using the database. You
might find them helpful after you've studied the database. The original database
was one flat table with no linked tables. If you prefer that format, it is easy
to recreate it using the provided MakeTable query.
Notes 6/4/02
- Pulling repetitive data (authors, publishers, wherepub) into separate tables
linked to BOOKS through ID fields didn't decrease the database size; it increased
it! But it is more technically correct, and it does facilitate mass editing,
and the automatic related-table lookups make it easy to find all the books by
a particular author (for example) just by browsing the Authors table rather
than by creating a query.
- However, the multiple tables did seriously complicate the entry of new books
because in some cases new data entered will be rejected as a result of the complications
introduced by all the one-to-many relationships. A new form is needed for data
entry, with dropdown comboboxes for finding authors, etc. In some cases, the
order in which you enter fields is important, and on the form you should order
the fields so that when this is the case, it forces the correct order to be
used.
- In maintaining the database, revise the Publisher, WherePub, or Author entries
only in the Books-All-UseForEditing query (which has all the "ID"
link fields), and be careful. In these fields, I often used the
exact text and punctuation shown in the book, which often varies for
the same publisher over time and helps to date books with no publication date
shown. If you do standardize and regularize entries where the publisher names
are abbreviated (by me) or differ only in spacing (which won't interfere with
the above), then here is how to do it:
- If there is an existing Publisher that is exactly the one you
want to use, just change the PubID field of the book you want to
change.
- If not, change the Publisher field directly; this will change
the entry for that publisher ID in the Publishers table, and thus
everywhere it appears in the database, which in this situation is probably
what you want.
- You can periodically use a FindUnmatched query to locate and delete
entries in the Publishers table that are no longer used by the Books table.
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