Structure of the example database

The design of the database strucure is by far the the most delicate and important passage and depends mainy on the data available and on the research aims.

For this tutorial a very simple schema of an archaeological database will be used. In its simplicity the schema is sufficiently articilated to give a glimpse of the main fatures of BraDypUS.

The schema is made of three main tables:

• sites contains structured information on archaeological sites
• su contains structured information on stratigraphic units, or contexts.
  Each su is located in a certain and known site, thus sites and su are linked by a one-to-many relationship, ie. one site might have zero, one or more su.
• bibliography contains bibliographic records on sites and su.
  bibliography is linked in a many-to-many relationship with both sites and su. This means that a bibliographic record might contain information for zero, one or many sites and su and vice-versa, a site might be described by zero, one, or meny bibliographic records.
  many-to-many relationships are obtained by use of a pivot table.

Finally, we will have the possibility of describing eventually samples taken from su. Since each su can provide zero, one or many samples, su and samples are thus joined in a one-to-many relationship.

Yet, samples will not be available as a table on itsown. It will be only available as an appendix to su. This appencices tables are called plugins in Bradypus.

Test database schema to be built (open SVG)

Download test schema in Graphiz dot format

Project bdus4Test {
  Note: 'Test database for Bradypus v4'
}
Table test__sites {
  id          int [pk, increment]
  creator     text
  name        text
  chronology  text
  capital     text
  description text
  lastmodified  text
  editor      text
}
Table tests__su {
  id          int [pk, increment]
  creator     int
  site        text
  su          text
  type        text
  description text
  note        text
}


Table tests__bibliography {
  id          int [pk, increment]
  creator     int
  short       text
  author      text
  title       text
  year        text
  publishedin text
}

Table tests__m_citations {
    id         int [pk, increment]
    table_link text
    id_link    text
    name       text
    pages      text
    notes      text
}

Table tests__m_samples {
  id            int [pk, increment]
  table_link    text
  id_link       int
  datetaken     text
  analysis      text
  reliability   text
  resultsvalues text
  notes         text
  info          text
}

Ref: "test__sites"."id" < "tests__m_citations"."id_link"

Ref: "tests__m_citations"."name" < "tests__bibliography"."id"

Ref: "tests__su"."id" < "tests__m_citations"."id_link"

Ref: "tests__su"."id" < "tests__m_samples"."id_link"