The above image is a screenshot of my iTunes library. While the the first two chapters of Kroenke’s book DataBase included many examples for each new vocabulary word, the iTunes library is a little easier for me to relate to. The rows contain data about a song entry. The columns contain data about attributes of the entity such as who is the artist, how long the track is or what genre it belongs to. When I download music sometimes there are null values. Some musicians, like Beck, cannot fit into any particular genre because their body of work is so diverse and crosses many types of genres. This sometimes complicates things because it makes his work harder to find and classify. As of now, iTunes still does not have the ability to list something under two genres and I’m sure music enthusiasts and DJ’s could really appreciate such a new feature. The first chapter explains how tables can be more useful than lists because information can be lost if it is deleted from a list where everything is linked, instead of a few tables that are related but can be reconfigured and still maintain data that is important. The text Databases by Stephen Ramsay states that “humanist inquiry reveals itself as an activity fundamentally dependent upon the location of pattern” Dealing with pattern necessarily implies the cultivation of certain habits of seeing; as one critic has averred ‘Recognizing a pattern implies remaining open to gatherings, groupings, clusters, repetitions, and responding to the internal and external relations they set up’.” With this being said, I feel like iTunes has already recognized many patterns but could always make room to improve.
ITunes is a relational database table because you can look at data from different perspectives and things relate in a certain way. For example, if the Rolling Stones are listed under “Rock n’ Roll” and you want to change the genre to “Rock,” you can do it in such a way that does not delete all the other information. My making sure you use a restricted or set vocabulary you can make sure it will be easier to find different types of music. Because much of the vocabulary was so new to me I am not sure what the SQL (Structured Querey Language) of iTunes might be and am I not sure what the normalization process for it might be…. But I think the primary key could be the album because then it means that genre and artist are linked to it and have to agree to be part of the same album, but I am not completely sure. If anyone has any ideas, let me know in your comments on what you think the Keys in iTunes might be.
