CaseStudy:Designing Memento databases:Photographic equipment

Case Study: An initial photographic equipment database

Introduction

In this study, we set out to create a barebones design & implementation of a database for a photographic equipment inventory for an amateur photographer or for a solo or very small professional photographic enterprise.
Our idea is to design a barebones but extensible database that will initially consist of a single library and will be able to grow to support several interrelated, linked libraries.

Nomenclature

Before we begin, let's ensure we have an agreed understanding of the terminology we'll use in this study. In Memento, our terminology values from other Glossary#DBMS disciplines, notably relational DBMSes (or RDBMSes). The following table shows the equivalencies:

Memento	Relational	Definition
Database	Database	A generic term meaning the base of all interrelated data regarding a person or application or subject matter.
Library	Table	Entries & fields or rows & columns of data
Field	Column	A typed data item occupying a position within a library or table
FieldEntry	Record (or row)	An instance or occurrence of data across fields or columns
Entry name	Primary key	The field or ordered set of fields (Column or ordered set of columns) that identify an entry or record
Link to entry	SQL	The means by which libraries or tables are related to each other

Requirements (the need)

Intro

Design considerations

Initial camera/lens/filter&hood, flash, tripod, bag/strap

Solution

Intro

Design

Screenshots

See the 5 email attachments

Implementation

Intro

The email

I have a LOT of camera equipment (Camera, Lens, Filters, tripods, bags, etc.). I want to be able to create records of all of this equipment for personal inventory as well as insurance purposes.

So far, none of the prebuilt programs I have looked at covered all of the data that I wanted to track on a per item basis, so I decided to use this program, some research into existing templates and a lot of soul-searching to create my own me-friendly database. So far so good. I spent all day yesterday architecting starting database. As will all programming, there will be further minor changes (new fields, verbiage tweaks, section grouping changes, etc.). That said, I am very happy with my initial go at this.

So, in this bare bones example, I have a camera entry, a lens entry, and a filter entry. In real life, ALL three of these items are physically part of the same "group/unit", The Lens is attached to the camera body and the filter is attached to that particular lens. While I still want to keep each item as their own separate record, I also want to link these 3 records together to visually show this relationship. And at some point, i want this grouping be part of a larger grouping (in a camera bag with other items for example).