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I think I empathized the most with the polar bear.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I have been scouring the Interwebs for an existing over-the-counter solution, but so far they have all been quite unable to handle the complexity of classical music, where instead of just having an artist, title, contents and CD data, you need composer, conductor, orchestra, principal artist(s), cadenza composer, different composers on the same CD und so weiter. If anybody knows of such a thing, speak now, or forever hold your peace, because I'll be sure to come look you up if you let me know after I start to roll my own. 
Since it seems certain that I am going to have to roll my own to get some sort of order out of chaos for my 2,000+ classical CDs, I would appreciate any suggestions for a database appropriate to such purpose - anything but Access - not because Access couldn't do the job, but because I am up to here *raises hand to brow* with clients insisting to use Access when the right tool for the job was SQL Server. Still, better then using Excel, I suppose... (yes, I have seen this where any DB would have been a better choice).
Any suggestions of a suitable DB would be most welcome, but being more or less retired now, I will be spending a lot of time looking at the user interface, so something that can be prettied up would be nice. Queries in some flavour of SQL would be nice too.
Suggestions? Pretty please?![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Ta everso!
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I use iTunes which provides most of the details you want. And the best part is that you just need to import the CDs (finished the latest set today) and iTunes finds the details. You also have the chance to modify the details if they are not exactly right. Since iTunes is free it is easy to import a couple of your CDs and see if it satisfies your requirements.
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Thanks for the suggestion, but I hate iTunes with a passion ever since my wife managed to synchronize every picture on her PC to her iPad, thereby rendering it useless, as they couldn't be removed since she had changed laptop.
I bought her an Android, instead.
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Well you can cause chaos with any application ...
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I use SQLite quite often
I'm not sure how many cookies it makes to be happy, but so far it's not 27.
JaxCoder.com
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I like SQLite as well, but it always struck me as very 'techie', with lots of function, but not so much form for a pretty user interface, with using a web i/f.
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Well, there's always the Classical Music Collector[^].
There really aren't any special demands, so just any database would do. (At least if it's going to be single user)
So for the choice of database I would simply say; use the one you're most comfortable with.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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Omigod omigod omigod  - where did that spring from! Neither Bing nor Google came up with that! 
Classical Music Collection looks like exactly what I need/want. forget me coming to look you up, unless it is bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh. (Actually it's more likely to be beer, schnapps and bacon butties, but times change. )
Thanks very much or that - looks like rolling my own just became redundant! 
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No worries.
If you ever pass by western Sweden, or me Cyprus, I will hold you to that. 
Beer, schnapps and Bacon butties that is. I don't need gold, can't stand frankincence and haven't a clue what myrrh actually is.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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You may only two of the three. I have just installed it, and it's really pretty good, but - there's usually a 'but' - it sits on top of SQLExpress 2005, not supported in WinTen. I have got it running, but it doesn't feel very happy! I'll try to run an upgrade later.
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If the upgrade fails you can always download the source code from Source Forge[^]
And it's in C#, so no nasty surprises there.
<edit>It's in both c# and VB, so it's up to you if you want to feel nastily surprised.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: It's in both c# and VB, so it's up to you if you want to feel nastily surprised.
Why does that sound like first cousins getting married by a justice of the peace two counties away so nobody finds out?
Software Zen: delete this;
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I'd use Access. Your reason for avoiding makes no sense.
In fact, many years ago I started a project to help catalogue my music library using an MP3 tag reader and Access. I was dismayed to find that MP3 tags are unreliable especially the older format.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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kmoorevs wrote: I was dismayed to find that MP3 tags are unreliable especially the older format
There's nothing wrong with the MP3 tagging mechanism. The version 1 tag created back in the MS-DOS era did have serious limitations, but it has long been superseded by the ID3v2.3.0 specification. All modern players adhere to it.
The problem you're having is the app that rips your music for you. I have a music collection of around 1,000 CD's and 9000 tracks. A little over half was ripped using iTunes, and the other half using Media Player. While the music sounded great, both of their tagging leaves something to be desired. iTunes has an aversion to keeping all of the tracks from a given album together. Media Player (current version 12.0) has a bug in mishandling tagging of the first track on a disc, leaving the title, artist, year, and some other fields blank. Neither one handles album art well. Both will try retrieving album information from several online data bases, and will use what they think is the closest match. Most of the time it's not bad. Older discs and re-releases of LP's can be problematic.
I present to you: Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)[^].
MP3tag is the answer. It makes it very easy to make batch updates to your music, and to reformat file names and organization as you wish. Very nice, very capable program.
BTW: I have no affiliation with the creators of MP3tag. I'm just very appreciative of a well-made product.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I serialize, deserialize and sometimes compress an xml file (of objects) when a (personal) data base is just not justified.
I would consider 2,000 xml records as trivial. I have one app with 20,000 xml "book passages" that (all) get deserialized to memory from a compressed resource (no lag).
LINQ does a fine job querying.
When so inclined, replace the serialize to XML with a "DB save / restore".
Use Xml NotePad for viewing (complex) xml.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I was for a while working with library software, on what was called the "FRBR" model - a four-level hierarchical abstraction model for literary works.
The top level is what FRBR calls the work. It is really a quite abstract concept that is like the "idea" or "story". In music, it might be like the motifs, phrases, themes and movements.
A work may be realized as e.g. a novel, a play, a movie, or in other forms. FRBR calls this an expression of the work. In music, different arrangements would be different expressions: A piano solo is a different expression from an orchestral version. A concert version is different from a scene musical.
When a specific manuscript (in the book world) is published, possibly adding comments, figures etc. for this specific edition, or score (in the music world) is recorded as interpreted by a group of artists, you create different manifestations of that expression.
For library use, the fourth level, the item, is one specific copy of that book. In a digital music world, you may choose to let the fourth level represent different renditions of the same recording, e.g. your vinyl copy, CD copy and off-the-air recording (e.g. with commentaries added by musical experts) - I chose to to that, although it breaks somewhat with the book library of an "item", where all items are, in principle, identical copies.
It takes without saying that in FRBR model development, there were intense discussions about the number of abstraction levels (varying from 2 to 7) and whether they be fixed or arbitrary (like in a file system). I am quite happy with FRBR ending up at four fixed levels, and I think it serves classification of music recordings well (with my private modification that the item level identifies not a physical copy of a manifestation, but a specific physical representation format of a given manifestation).
I have used this model for organizing my own music archive - not just recordings, but also sheet music and scores in various representations, as well as photos/videos from specific performances (manifestations). Unfortunately, my archive system is currently far from the quality required for release to other users. Yet, I have found this hierarchical classification scheme to be very useful to manage my music archive, and will recommend to others to go for something similar - in particular if you are like me: Always eager to compare different performances / manifestations, or comparing completely different arrangements / expressions of the same work.
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I use MusicBee as a music manager. While I find the UI can be challenging due to design decisions, it rips well, I can find music easily, playlists are unlimited (playlist interface is not intuitive and took getting used to), writes to stick, AND it supports every tag I can think of.
A major point for me is the differentiation between the track artist and the album artist. A lot of players (including iTunes) do not appear to understand "album artist" and tend to break up compilation albums by track artist. MusicBee allows custom sorting, so it does things my way.
In addition to Publisher, Composer, Conductor, and other standard fields, it supports 16 custom fields.
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You might need to glean from multiple sources.
Classical Music Collector has already been suggested. You might also look at
<a href="http://www.classical.net">Classical.net</a>
or
<a href="https://www.thrall.org/databases/Classical.comClassicalMusicLibrary.html">Thrall Classical Music Library</a>
Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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Capable of grasping before the chicken rained heavily? (10)
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Want to preempt the answer before anyone does but I dont have a solution. I get stumped with ? in CCC
cheers,
Super
------------------------------------------
Too much of good is bad,mix some evil in it
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super wrote: I get stumped with ?
The question mark often means it's "an example of" (rather than a synonym), but you know what Griff is like with his misdirections - it could just be nothing.
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The cheek of him!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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