Difference between revisions of "Database Model"

Revision as of 07:18, 16 June 2017

Main Tables

Publishers

Titles

aka Series Titles
Titles are unique by Publisher, series title, series year and series year sequence.

• series title - the name of the series
• series year - cover date of the first issue of the series
• series year sequence - when a publisher starts and stops (i.e, restarts from issue number 1) multiple times in a single year, the sequence is used to keep the title unique as well as to indicate publication order
• series type - one shot, limited (mini) series, continuing (regular ongoing series), graphic novel (original content published in a book instead of published individual issues, and later collected into book form), may also allow for other series types for collected issues (trade paperback/hardcover, anthology, compilations).
• series status - only for series that consist of multiple issues (i.e., not one shots). different series types may have different status values. for a limited series: in-process and completed. for a continuing series: ongoing, pauses, ended, terminated.

Issues

There will be only 1 record for a given comic book issue, which will contain data about when it released, cover date, cover price, type, etc. If there are multiple variants of a given comic book issue, these will be describe in the variants table. Additionally, the variants table may provide fields that override values on the issues table. For example a 2nd printing variant may have a release date that is later than the release date of the first issue.

• iss_id: PK
• ttl_id: FK
• issue number
• issue extension
• full issue number
• title / Issue Name ?
• sub title / Issue Tagline ?
• release date
• cover date - generally will just have a month and a year
• key date
• cover price ?
• currency
• issue type ?
• mature content flag / content rating ?
• number of pages ?
• color / black & white ?
• age ?
• country ?
• language ?
• notes
• synopsis ?

Issue Name (from CBdb): The issue name is most often inside the issue, listed with the names of the creators. If no issue name is found but one exists on the cover of the issue, that is an acceptable alternative.

Issue Tagline (from CBdb): the issue tagline field is for the tagline on the cover of an issue that looks like an issue name but does not match the issue's name in the pages. An example of this would be Identity Crisis v1 #4 where the tagline on the cover says, "The Truth!" but the actual issue name is "Chapter Four: Who Benefits"

Cover Date: the cover date is the date on the cover or in the copyright of the book - not the date on which the issue comes out. Generally it only contains a month and a year. Do not use the day field unless there is a specific day listed in the issue's cover date. Can also have optional part of the month values like: Early, Mid-Month, Late.

Key Date - how the issues should be sorted chronologically... closely related to Cover date/release, but would contain the day of the month (and possibly the time), so that when all the issue of the series or of a story arc are listed, they can be sorted by the key date and be displayed in the order that the issues

Cover Price - should have a method to indicate FREE

Issue Number: a numeric value, typically an integer starting at 1, but on occasion can be a negative number or zero, for example issue # -1 or issue number # 0. Sometimes the issue number can be a floating point number, e.g. 15.1

Issue Extension - this is reserved for non-numeric characters that are part of the issue Number like Age of Ultron #10AI - here AI would be entered Into the Issue Extension. The issue extension is not for variant identification.

full issue number - this is the issue number and extension and any additional text that are used by the publisher to identify the issue in the series

issue type (format) - not sure what the column name should be for this piece of data. Possible values: Standard Comic Book, Trade Paperback, Manga, Hardcover, Original Graphic Novel, webcomic, Anthology, bookshelf, magazine, digital media, mini comic, Prestige Format, Ashcan, Flipbook, Fanzine, Other Comic Related Media

mature content flag / content rating - values of: Contains mature content or Does not contain mature content... alternatively could have ratings similar to G, PG, R, etc.

Synopsis - put this as separate table I'm thinking... could be user contributed, multiple, vote on which synopsis is best, which synopsis is the default one, flags for when synopsis have spoilers

Notes - the notes field is for any notes that relate to the issue and do not fit into any of the other fields.

Variants

conventions for variant naming

• Standard/Regular Cover
• Cover A, Cover B, etc.
• <artist-name> Variant
• Second Printing, 3rd Printing, etc.
• 75 Cent (or other monetary variation) Variant [usually indicates a reprint?]

editions...

• Direct Edition
• Newsstand Edition
• Mass Market Edition
• Special Edition
• Collectors' Edition
• etc..

Related Material

The inclusion of other related Titles when listing a main Title. For example, in a list of the Fantastic Four Series Title, additional titles such as Annuals, Specials, Reprints, Trade Paper Baks, etc would be listed after the main listing of issues. There would be types of related materials that the user could choose to show, and the user may also choose to incorporate these additional series titles in the main listing. For a given Series Title, the main series, there will several related series, that do not have the same Series Title as the main series, such as: - Annuals - Specials - Collected Issues (TPB, etc.) - Reprints These related series should be displayed underneath the issues for the main series, sorted by: type (e.g., annuals first, then specials, then collected issues, etc.), then issue number (desc).

title continuity

for a given series title, if it continues a different series, or continued from a different series.

collected in

tracks all the places a given issue is published in, e.g., trade paper backs collect individual issues. So the collated_in table would list all trades that the issue appears in. so when creating the data model for Trade Paper backs, you would have a Header table (PK: tpb_id) and a detail table. In the detail table you would have the tpb_dtl_id, tpb_hdr_id, iss_id. one could then query this table by iss_id and get the list of Trade Paper backs that collect the issue.

reprints

if a

Additional Tables

Imprints

could we store these in the same table as publishers and have fields to indicate that the record is an Imprint and the imprint's parent publisher?

Story Arcs & Cross Overs

tracks all the issues that make up a given Story Arc A story arc is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as comic books with each episode following a narrative arc.

group and families

???