Tuesday, December 6, 2011

November 28, 2011 - Database data entry

After receiving feedback from RPM on my table attributes, I decided to make some small changes to field characteristics before starting table data entry.

I opened my virtual machine, ran the Update Manager, and then navigated to Applications, Programming to open MySQL Workbench. I opened the readings connection and double-clicked on catalog to access my tables. I right-clicked on accesspoints and chose Alter Table from the menu which appeared. First of all, I labeled the readingsid as an integer(10) datatype in my readings table and an integer (11) datatype in my accesspoints table. I changed the accesspoints table integer to reflect the readings table.readingsid characteristic. I then changed notes to a text datatype, because they could be much longer than 255 characters. I clicked Apply twice and these changes were made.

I chose 13 readings from the ARST5100 class to input into my database. These readings came from a variety of sources, which I thought would provide a wider range of information for my queries. Starting with the readings table, I right-clicked, bring up the menu from which I chose Edit Table Data. Leaving readingsid blank, I began to enter information into each of the remaining columns:
title
source
imprint
page_range
file_name
notes
link

For each of the readings, I was able to fill in title, source, and imprint. However, depending on whether the reading was a website or a more traditional report, book excerpt, or article, I input the appropriate information in the columns and left others blank. This was not an issue as I did not specify any of these as non-null. Once all of this information was entered, I hit the Verify button on the upper row within the Query to save the information.

After entering all of this data, I realized it would be more efficient to create a separate spreadsheet for the accesspoints table in order to have all the information in one place before data entry. I created a spreadsheet listing the subject, form_genre, and author of each of the readings I chose for my readings table. I believed I may be able to import this spreadsheet into MySQL; but per RPM's warning this was quite complicated and I decided not to attempt it.

When I completed entering all of this information for both tables, I right-clicked on each table and selected Select Rows - Limit 100 to double-check that my readingsids corresponded.

This completed my data entry.

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