Science Fiction Magazine Database Update IV

Time for an update. Another progress report on developing an Open Source free database.  Click here to see earlier posts on this topic. Really not much has changed on the surface. You can't tell by the looks. I had a brief flurry of intense creativity following my upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04. Still haven't got used to the new Unity interface. Grumble.

I have now uploaded all the magazine data to MySQL, which is on the Ubuntu computer. MySQL constitutes the "Back-End", were the data now resides. MS Access is still being used, now as the "Front-End" (user interface). This allows me to continue to keep the magazine data up-to-date.

There were a few challenges in getting MS Access and MySQL to work together. Those issues have been apparently overcome. I have also developed an extremely primitive webpage. Eventually, this would allow users to access the data through their web browser thereby eliminating MS access as the user interface. Since I know very little concerning HTML and PHP, its going to be a while.

As I have expressed in the past, this is pretty much a personal learning exercise.  This data is already freely available on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB).  Makes my project somewhat redundant. The ISFDB is a great resource.  Cover art can also be viewed here.

Below is the introductory, screen which remains essentially unchanged from prior version.

Introductory Screen

Below is how a magazine would be displayed by issue.

Magazine Screen

Below is the primitive webpage. A lot of learning remains.

Primitive Webpage

Below is the author dump that you get when you click on the button "Connect to MySQL".  The good news is that my browser connects to the Ubuntu computer and can interact with it (also PHP and MYSQL)  to display the data below.

 

Sample Author Listin