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[EpF]

I was wondering if the new relational system in MC11 means that I can make an 'Artist Rating' field and then once I fill in a rating for an artist, all files with that artist in the tag automatically shows up the same rating?  That'd be SOOO cool!

 

Listening to: Underworld - 'Spoon Deep', from 'Dark & Long'

[TAFKAFEX]

Your question could lead to a minefield.

Example: There are some artists who change their 'Genre' over the years. So if you chang the 'Genre' for this artist, you want to change all 'Genre' for all his older albums? Or the newer ones? Or all of his tracks?

Where is the border?

Listening to: 'Let's All Make A Bomb' from 'How Live Is' by 'Heaven 17' on Media Center 11

[IanG]

I was wondering if the new relational system in MC11 means that I can make an 'Artist Rating' field and then once I fill in a rating for an artist, all files with that artist in the tag automatically shows up the same rating?  That'd be SOOO cool!

It's technicaly possible, but there would have to be some way for the user to  define the relationship between the 2 fields.  It would be nice to have, but it's probably not worth the trouble.

Ian G.

[EpF]

Your question could lead to a minefield.

TafkaFex  - Point taken, but in fairness it would only be a minefield of people's own individual making!  I mean, if I don't make a custom 'artist genre' field, then I don't have that problem...  

Your point is more related to the issue of genres in general than to the use of 'group' fields, for want of a better term.

It's technicaly possible, but there would have to be some way for the user to  define the relationship between the 2 fields.  It would be nice to have, but it's probably not worth the trouble.

Ian G.

Ian - fair enough, but can you tell me what effect a relational database has on organising the MC library?  That's really what I was trying to find out...

[kaiynne]

Not sure if this will be enabled in MC11 but could certainly perform this operation within a relational database quite easily.

firstly create a user defined field called album rating and force all tracks under that album to have the same album rating.  I do this in Mc10, but obviously have to select all tracks from the album and tag them at once.  Doesn't take much longer than it would were this enabled though.  But there may be other uses which would benefit from such database manipulation power.

[IanG]

It's technicaly possible, but there would have to be some way for the user to  define the relationship between the 2 fields.  It would be nice to have, but it's probably not worth the trouble.

Ian G.

Ian - fair enough, but can you tell me what effect a relational database has on organising the MC library?  That's really what I was trying to find out...

Assuming there's no facility for managing relationships, I don't think it'll have any effect.  Let's use your example of an artist rating.  I'd expect MC to have a table of artists - each artist will have a name and an ID.  When you tag a file in the db, it's the ID that goes against the file, not the name.  Suppose I now decide that "Yngwie Malmsteen" should be "Yngwie J Malmsteen", the name in the artist table gets changed, but nothing else since the files are associated with the name via the ID, and that didn't change - it's quick and efficient.  

Suppose you now want to add your artist rating field - the normal way would be to add another field to the artist table.  There's no tool to do that, so you have to create the field, manualy select all the Yngwie tracks and then update the artist rating field for each one.  Not much of a task, but you'll have to do it each time you add a new track.

I guess MC could include a db management tool but, as TafkaFex has already said, it's a minefield! I think this a case where simplicity is more important than efficiency.

Ian G.