Big project - need advice

[WizyWyg]

I plan on developing a site that will be a database to hold information on animation (its for a school project and a database we plan on using for courses) of titles for movies, tv series, commercials, etc that contained animation (and will also cover animation from other countries as well)

Just need advice on how to set up the tables in our database to handle the amt of information to be included into the website (we are going to be cataloging over 1000 titles). I;ve dabbled in PHP and Mysql for a small "loan" library I created, but this seems to be a doozy of a project.

Each title will include information like studios who produced it, cast credits, voice actor/actress, running length (if its a movie), episode length (if its a series) - and if its an episodic series, and episode guide will be included as well, a brief 100 word summary of what the title was about; year(s) it was produced/aire in, and genre. And an image included for each title so one can find out if its the series they are looking to find information (a thumbnail of say the title screen or if available on video/dvd an image of the packaging for the video/dvd) and also links to where one could purchase if available for sale.

So far for the database, i know i would need tables for:
studios
actors/actresses
genre
titles (this will probably contain the most of hte information).


You could say it'll be the "imdb" for cartoons and animation, but of course I dont want it to be associated with imdb (for obvious reasons).

Any help in trying to map out the info will be greatly appreciated, and for what is needed, here is an example of one entry that would appear on a page:

Title, with img (if available), Cast Credits, main charcters, cast, directed by, main writers, studio, year(s) produced/aired, running length (episode length), episode guide (if available), brief summary, and links to purchase if available for purchase.

And a search engine that can be found on each of those as well.

Am I getting in over my head on this? Im the only one handling the coding on this, and the GUI of the site is being handled by someone else.

 

[inlandpac]

One thing you need to do is write down every single thing that would go into your database.

You then need to determine the relations between each item. You can place parent/basic information into one table and then all other tables will contain detailed information relative to each item in your parent table.

MySQL will definitely handle this project, and I can tell you from my experiences, that this is not something that you cannot do once you get it organized.

You need to analyze how users will visit the site and what they will see. If they see a movie title under Science Fiction and click on it, what will they see. If this page will have links for the cast in that movie which will then contain bios and other movies that each has been in (with links to those as well), then that will give you the hint as to how to design and develope your database(s).

There is way too much information that has to be gone through spec'd, so there is really not much anyone can help you with because there is not much we can go on (since we are not on the project and don't have the details).

Anyway, I am sure you will have no problems once you get going and get involved.

chad. ICQ: 54380631