What Program to Use?

[Bothersome]

I need to keep my movie library (Name of movie and location of DVD) on my knoppix setup (chip usb drive).

I need a kind of database program or should I use open office calc to do this for me? I'd kinda like to use a database type program.

What program do you suggest and how do you start and connect it to a database?

I'm currently using Knoppix 3.4

Thanks for your advice.

Kenneth

[Bothersome]

..

[user unknown]

The database No. 1 on linux is Postgresql.

But it needs a lot of learning to manage a database - I would dissuade if you don't know sql.

OpenOffice isn't very fast and complicated to combine with other programs.

How complicated is your datastructure?
For a simple structure:

No Tittle Year
1 Foo 2001
2 Bar 2004
...

I would use a grep script:

#!/bin/bash
#
# finddvd (c) LPGL 2004 user unknown :) 
#
grep $1 /home/bothersome/data/dvd.lst

make it executable, put it into the patch, create my dvd.lst - file and use it like this:

finddvd Foo
finddvd 2003

voila.

[Cuddles]

User Unknown,

Cool idea... I take it that grep is going to return the complete line that it finds your search text in ?

If that is the case, you could easily add more information on the single line, right?

ID Title Year MediaType RunningTime (in minutes) Rating
...
532 Labyrinth 1999 DVD 102 PG
533 Matrix Reloaded 2003 DVD 138 R
...

If I know grep, as stated above, you could then search for all your movies in a single year, or that have a specific rating, or specific media type, or a "partial" title name, (this is good when you don't know the "complete" name of a movie), and the "data" file is easily updatable, or printable. Cool.

Ms. Cuddles

[garyng]

I would suggest office 'calc'(I believe it is the Excel equivalent). People has been using Spreadsheet for this kind of usages for years, dated back to 1-2-3 or earlier(visicalc?).

The advantage is that you can have some relatively user friendly data entry interface and can usually manipulate the data relatively easy.

[user unknown]

cuddles: yes - it returns the whole lines, which may lead to unexpected results, when asking for the year 2003:

finddvd 2003

533 Matrix Reloaded 2003 DVD 138 R
2003 Labyrinth 1999 DVD 102 PG

but from a pragmatic view, it's perhaps the smallest and fastest solution possible.

If you need something more sophisticated, (year 1999-200), OpenOffice Calc or Gnumeric are advisable.

When you really store related data, - producer, fIlmmusik, prices, vendors, actors ... a rdbm - database will be useful.

I use the grep-technique for my telefon/ adresslist, with the benefit, that the data is stored on a win-vfat-fs, so I can grep the data from both systems, (which was more usefull in former times, when I used windows from time to tijme) .
A win-grep and and editors which don't care to much about line-delimiters is of course needed.

[sjmacko]

This may not fit with what you are looking for, but I use this program for my DVD, VHS, home movie collection.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/videodb/

Steve

[Bothersome]

Thanks guys!!

You've been a great help.