Mainly copied from discussion on studio naming thread, a general overview of how I think the studio name linking should work, and as such, a feature request. First half is more general reasoning, second half is more specific for implementation.


"It depends on how you define accuracy."

But I'll go one step further than Skip and try to lay out how accuracy can be defined.

The data in the database is accurate when:

1) it matches the exact text shown on screen in the film (including typos and variations in the company name).
2) it matches the actual corporate name (or subset thereof, if we want to remove Inc/LLC/etc) of the company being referred to in the film.
3) it matches the current corporate name (or subset thereof) of the company being referred to in the film.
4) it matches the label used by the company in question when promoting itself with respect to the film.
5) it matches an internally designated code (usually a variation on the corporate name) that's intended to link #'s 2-4 together in a consistant manner.


Output can be intended for:

1) the ability to link films done by the same corporate entity while it existed under a particular name.
2) the ability to link films done by the same corporate entity, regardless of how its name changed over time.
3) the ability to link films produced by the company and promoted under a particular label.
4) the ability to link films regardless of changes in company name, and across all labels.
5) the ability to catalog the studios (of any of variations 2-4 in the first block) available in your collection or the database.
6) more esoteric searches, such as the list of all films that studio X and studio Y have worked on together (ie: 'and' searches on the studios instead of 'or' searches) which may be specific to a particular corporate name or at any time in the corporate history.

Note: linking can imply either bringing up the list of relevant films or getting a count to use in a statistical graph.

John would like to know the purpose of the data (second block of options) to be able to render an opinion on how the data can be collected (first block of options).  The problem is, people want all of the second block of options.  There are times, for me, when the label is the most important factor.  There are others where the label is irrelevant and I want the base corporate name.  Some people want info on films by X Productions before they merged with another company and became XY Productions.  Others don't care, and would want the entire history that in any way included X.

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to supply data for all of the second block of options with the current program limitations.  Given that, we go for a value that people can generally agree on as being at least adequate to what they want.

We can, however, come up with ideas on how the database can be structured such that we can cover a larger portion of the business rules.

What might work would be to have the studios get an addendum field of "Under the Label of" that works similar to the cast's "Credited As", except also being able to search either the base name or the label name.  Use the corporate name as it existed at the time the film was made, and allowing for a multi-select search, 'should' for the most part cover the second set of options.

Quoting Unicus:

Quote:
'Touchstone Pictures' used to be called 'Touchstone Films'.  I like to know which films I own that were made under that 'banner'...can't do that unless they are entered 'as credited'.

'RKO Radio Pictures' used to be two studios, 'RKO Pictures' and 'Radio Pictures'.  I like to know what films were made by each of those production arms...can't do that unless they are entered 'as credited'.

Are you getting an idea now?

Unicus, I believe you've just answered his question.  What you describe is a "business rule" - how you intend to make use of the data.  You also described (roughly) how the data needs to be formatted in order for you to be able to process that business rule.

So, for your purposes, you need Touchstone Films and Touchstone Pictures to be separate entries.  For someone else who wants to know all the Touchstone pictures, they'd need to know all the name variants out there in order to search for it (easy enough in this case, but not guaranteed), and it would be much easier for them to have a single "Touchstone" entry (a "common name" of sorts).  And then you can go in the other direction to include all the labels used by the company (may not apply in this case - I'm not familiar enough with them - but you get the general idea).

So we need multiple levels of linking:

1) Specific company entries, as credited.
2) A base, 'common' name, to represent a company over time.  Different common names may each link to the same company (eg: when they merge) [rules for linking would need some hashing out]
3) Label names tied to a particular company (1).  Multiple companies (eg: when a company changes names) may point to the same label.


So at point of entry, you'd have:

Select company
Select (not simple straight entry) "credited as" to specify the particular company (required)
Select "under the label of" to specify label used, if any (optional)

Be able to search any of the three fields.  If "label" is blank, it defaults to the "credited as" company.

What would be really nice would be able to link those values together explicitly for ease of entry.  Thus, when you choose a common name, the "credited as" drop-down would only list companies that are directly associated with the common name, and the "label" drop down would only list labels associated with the credited company.  These links would of course be updateable.


Ok, that would be my ideal setup.