Re: Simple DBMS in VB

On Feb 9, 10:35 am, erew...@xxxxxxxxxx (J French) wrote:
On 9 Feb 2007 05:38:36 -0800, "Steve" <sredm...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 9, 8:23 am, erew...@xxxxxxxxxx (J French) wrote:

First, don't call it a DBMS
- it is a multiply indexed Random Access storage system
I have never heard this term before

Well I am older than you

If you know about Binary file access ( Seek etc ) then you are a long
way towards a Random Access system for Variable length chunks of data.
Yes, I am very familiar with binary file access in VB. The problem is
not in how to implement an idea (code) the problem is getting my mind
around the file structure required to accomplish the goal

In some ways it is writing the tools and the wrapping them to do what
you want.

How many records ?
If over about 100,000 then you need an indexing system
(in the old days it was about 5,000 )

What you want to do is 'roll your own' data management system
Yep, that is what I want...how is this not a DBMS (DataBase Management
System)?

You'll know after you have written one
- it is pretty easy, you just need to decide on certain criteria

I'll help you if you show talent.

Ok, I am not really getting what I am looking for here (although I
think we are getting close). Probably the reason for this is my
inability to clearly define what it is that I am trying to do. So in
hopes of clarifing here is the full story.

I have an application that I have written which I originally intended
for personal use only. It is a simple mp3 jukebox program which (for
the most part) duplicates the functionality of Windows media player.
I wrote my own (instead of using WMP) to get some functionality not in
WMP and because it was fun. Now although the app was originally
developed for personal use only, several of my friends (after seeing
the app in use in my home theater system) have asked for a copy of
it. I gladly gave them the compiled exe. Some of my friends have not
been able to run the app because it uses several OCXs which they do
not have on their machine. There are basically two solutions to this:
1) Create a setup which installs and registers the required dlls/OCXs.
2) Remove all OCXs and dlls and find ways to accomplish the same tasks
with pure VB code (the VB runtime is installed with windows) and WIN32
APIs. I choose the second approach. I have succeeded in removing all
dependancies except the ones required to manage the Jet database which
holds the media library. Now I realize that this simple bit of data
management could easily be accomplished with a simple flat file and
the VB sequential file access routines. Problem is that when I
started to create this simple solution I thought it would be fun to
create a more complex data storage/retrieval system. So that is where
I am at.

Here is the current Access DB structure used to hold the data in my
app

tblGenres
ID
Name

tblArtists
ID
Name

tblAlbums
ID
ArtistID
Title
CoverArt
Path

tblSongs
ID
ArtistID
AlbumID
TrackNum
Title
GenreID
Length
File

tblPlaylists
ID
Name

tblPlaylistSongs
PlaylistID
SongID

The application uses the data in the following ways:
1) Show stats on the media library ie. Number of songs, Number of
songs of a particular genre, Number of songs by a particular artist,
Number of albums, number of albums by a particular artist, Number of
songs in playlist, play length of playlist, etc.

2) Display a list of artists then the list of albums for each artist
then the list of songs on each album

3) Display an albums cover art

4) Load and play an mp3 specified by Album.Path & Song.File

5) Create, save and edit playlists.

Again although this specific bit of data management could be fairly
simply implemented with flat files and sequential file access, I think
I would like to try to create a more generic and useful data
management system for use in this project and possibly future projects
where a full-blown DB might be overkill.

Thanks for your insight and sorry about the length of this post

.

Relevant Pages

  • Saving/Loading Table Data to/from file
    ... Master Table = Artists ... Detail Table = Albums ... Detail Table = Songs ... Bmp: TBitmap; ...
    (alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi)
  • Saving/Loading Table data to/from file
    ... Master Table = Artists ... Detail Table = Albums ... Detail Table = Songs ... Bmp: TBitmap; ...
    (borland.public.delphi.database.ado)
  • Re: Access or Excel??
    ... I'd create a new sheet called Songs and arrange the data on it ... "Artist - Album" matching to ensure that albums with the same name by ... different artists match the correct song list. ... Let's say you have a sheet called Albums. ...
    (microsoft.public.excel.misc)
  • Re: OT: Secret Music
    ... some songs, albums, artists... ... with your records collection? ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)
  • Re: OT: Secret Music
    ... some songs, albums, artists... ... with your records collection? ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)