Friday, January 9, 2009
Geek Out: Redux
So last night after dinner, I proceeded to rebuild my database. I dumped everything into Access, and created new tables from there. Why Access? Because I can *see* what is happening in Access, whereas in MySQL I have to take extra steps to see my results. The rebuilding wasn’t really as bad as I thought it would be, as I only needed relatively simple Access queries to manipulate my data.
From there, I uploaded the tables into MySQL, and proceeded to rebuild my php files to query the database.
With a minimum amount of bickering and quibbling, Michael and I were able to do that, although he kept trying to make one query much harder than it needed to be. Needless to say, by the time we finished up last night it was past my bedtime, which is why I didn’t have a post ready for this morning.
But the important thing is the new database is up and all public queries are working.
Now I just have to rebuild the administrative back end to allow me to add, edit, and delete books from the database. Hopefully now that the tables have better relationships, the rebuilding will be easier to do.
Hopefully.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Although there isn’t pure a 1 to 1 correspondence between mySQL fields and Access fields, when designing a database from scratch I like to prototype in Access first. As you noted, you see your results more quickly. You can then manually create the tables using phpMyAdmin, or write your own create statements. That’s what I do, although if my mySQL work continues to increase, I may investigate a program called Access To MySQL that a couple of people have recommended I try.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Well, all I really wanted was to create my new tables, and Access was perfect for that.
I already had queries I could modify, so that was the easiest thing for me to do.
It’s pretty awesome that I have access to Dreamweaver and Access through work. :)
January 10th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Sounds like fun. Geez, I’m such a geek!! I should really do my books and music.
Depending on where I am and who I’m working with, I can start as basic as Excel and move upstream from there, especially as it’s easy to migrate Excel to Access. I always have liked Access, especially for personal use.
January 10th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Well, if you want to try MySQL, once I finish the admin section, I can send you php/mysql files.
I only have five tables in the new database, and two of those tables are lookup tables.
And I also should do this for DVDs, but I’ll make Michael enter them…