Database Research

              As I have mentioned in my introduction profile assignment for this course, one of my hobbies and interests in my life is collecting music. My favorite genre and study of music is film scores. Like some other genres of music, it has a vast history and extremely large library of music, but is considered one of the biggest libraries for music in general. I have spent about ten years collecting and organizing my collection of film music, with downloading and purchasing music from various websites. Two of the biggest issues and tasks of my database are updating new music and finding track information.
              The database I use is iTunes, which is probably the biggest and most used database for any music library. Although some of the music is from iTunes itself and easier to organize, for iTunes provides all details of their tracks, many of my tracks are incomplete with details due to the fact that they come from other sources. Over the course of my collecting, I have tried to retrieve information through various film music websites and even movie database websites, particularly IMDB.com. But I have even come across problems where some of these database websites do not have everything I am looking for. With any type of database, the challenge comes in continuing to update the newer materials, while at the same time researching the very rare and old material. But as I continue to organize my library using iTunes, the database system it provides has helped me very much in researching information, as well as providing tools in the program to help identify the details of incomplete music tracks.

1. In an online article written by Carol Francois discussing the advantages of DBMS, she states that, “There are five major advantages of DBMS or database management systems: data structure, authorization control, processing speed, modular development, and independent back-up functionality.” [Francois 1] In my certain situation, the one major advantage that is compatible to my organizational system is data structure. iTunes has an extremely organized structure, and it even gives you choices on how you want the structure of your music information accumulated to make your music search in the database easier to your own use. One challenge the program has is tagging and adding detail information for each track. This portion of the iTunes database system is called metadata. “Metadata is essentially a portion of information that is attached to a file (beyond the file name) that determines how that file is treated by its file system. In our case, the metadata of our music files will dictate the way they’re organized into folders in Finder (more on that shortly) as well as how they’re displayed for us within iTunes.” [Danielson 1] Even with the process of using metadata for iTunes, further research is needed to fill in the required data from outside sources, and the more detail there is for each track the more organized the database will be.

2. The iTunes database, provided by Apple which is probably the leader in any technology field in the world, definitely since the creation of their database has been the competitive leader in the music market. Microsoft has over the years attempted to imitate the same system as Apple, but have failed. They are still in the works of producing a similar database that provides more options and features that Apple’s iTunes does not offer. The competitive advantage is that it is one of its kinds to all music listeners, and no other databases are available. Using the concept of non-price competition, the name of the database itself makes it a world-wide leader in the music database market. It also is the type of database that is simple and easy to use for all music listeners of any age. As Francois states, “It is very common to have different access levels built into a database system, and a DBMS makes this very easy to manage. Access can be defined at the data table level. If the user does not have access to a specific table, they cannot run any query that uses data from that table. Control at this level is easy to maintain, and preferable to setting the access at the individual reporting level.” [Francois 1]

3. The biggest improvement that iTunes can achieve is the detailing of providing information to each individual track. Although there are programs out there outside of iTunes that can attempt to provide track details with tagging and coding, it would be a lot simpler if it was done within the database itself. iTunes has a few features and tools that attempt this process, but most of the time it either takes too long or fails to provide the information. The program needs to update itself to have tools to research older music, as well as music that are rare to the iTunes store and library. This improvement can also benefit in transferring music from other hardware devices such as CDs, external drives, and DVDs. In an article discussing issues with iTunes and how it can improve, Martin McBrown states several points and questions; “If the music is old though, then iTunes starts looking for the IP address (not the name) of the server on which the volume used to reside. Now I can, kind of, understand why it does this, but why does iTunes wait around for a minute expecting this machine to answer? Ignoring this annoying aspect, if iTunes retains this specific information about where the file is located, how is it able to find the file when I mount a volume with the same name? If iTunes wants to be so specific about where the file is located, why does it ignore that information when it first looks for the file? Of course, there’s no way of block updating the information so that it always looks at the new location. Nor does iTunes intelligently update its database when it plays the file and discovers it on a different server (but same apparent volume) than that registered in the database.” [McBrown 1]


Works Cited

Danielson, Scott. "How To Clean Up Your ITunes Library." Mactuts RSS.com.  Envato, 19       July 2012. Web. 06 Jan. 2013.  <http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/media/itunescleanup/>.

Francois, Carol. "What Are the Advantages of DBMS?" WiseGeek.com.  Conjecture, 2003-2013. Web. 06 Jan. 2013.  <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-advantages-of- dbms.htm>.

McBrown, Martin. "ITunes Database Issues." GigaOM.com. GigaOM, 13 Dec.  2005. Web. 06 Jan. 2013. <http://gigaom.com/apple/itunes- database-issues/>.