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Designing a book management database requires careful consideration of the types of data we need to store and how users will interact with it. Let's design a basic schema for such a database. This design will handle books, authors, categories, publishers, and user reviews.
Tables & Their Attributes:
Authors:
Categories:
Publishers:
Books:
BookCategories (To manage many-to-many relationship between Books and Categories):
Reviews:
Users (For the sake of reviews):
Relationships:
A book can be written by one author but an author can write many books. This is a one-to-many relationship between Authors
and Books
.
A book can have many categories and a category can have many books. This is a many-to-many relationship. Hence, we've introduced the BookCategories
table to manage this.
A book can be published by one publisher but a publisher can publish many books. This is a one-to-many relationship between Publishers
and Books
.
A user can write many reviews, but each review pertains to a single book. This is a one-to-many relationship between Users
and Reviews
.
SQL Creation Snippets (using generic SQL):
CREATE TABLE Authors ( AuthorID INT PRIMARY KEY, FirstName VARCHAR(100), LastName VARCHAR(100), BirthDate DATE, Biography TEXT ); CREATE TABLE Categories ( CategoryID INT PRIMARY KEY, CategoryName VARCHAR(100) ); CREATE TABLE Publishers ( PublisherID INT PRIMARY KEY, PublisherName VARCHAR(100), Address TEXT, ContactNumber VARCHAR(20) ); CREATE TABLE Books ( BookID INT PRIMARY KEY, Title VARCHAR(255), ISBN VARCHAR(13), PublicationDate DATE, Summary TEXT, Price DECIMAL(10,2), AuthorID INT, PublisherID INT, FOREIGN KEY (AuthorID) REFERENCES Authors(AuthorID), FOREIGN KEY (PublisherID) REFERENCES Publishers(PublisherID) ); CREATE TABLE BookCategories ( BookID INT, CategoryID INT, FOREIGN KEY (BookID) REFERENCES Books(BookID), FOREIGN KEY (CategoryID) REFERENCES Categories(CategoryID), PRIMARY KEY (BookID, CategoryID) ); CREATE TABLE Users ( UserID INT PRIMARY KEY, FirstName VARCHAR(100), LastName VARCHAR(100), Email VARCHAR(150), Password VARCHAR(255) -- hashed and salted ); CREATE TABLE Reviews ( ReviewID INT PRIMARY KEY, UserID INT, BookID INT, Rating INT, Comment TEXT, ReviewDate DATE, FOREIGN KEY (UserID) REFERENCES Users(UserID), FOREIGN KEY (BookID) REFERENCES Books(BookID) );
This is a basic design. In real-world applications, you would need to handle more advanced features like multiple authors for a book, book editions, stock levels, transactions, or even eBook file management. Adjustments can be made based on specific requirements.