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To the Editor:
I read the items on databases in your last Newsletter and sympathised with the travails of the authors concerned - thankfully, I've never encountered a database allowing 'repeated fields,' which sounds like a guarantee for conversion disaster!
Having confronted the problems of dealing with 'alphameric numbers,' as you did ("Data Base Design: It's Never As Easy As It Looks") , I thought it might be worthwhile adding a note for readers about another way to resolve this, one that could in some circumstances be easier. This is to leave the principal field (50+, etc) unaltered - better for input and much easier to manipulate in report processing, etc. - but to incorporate another field which contains the number alone (e.g 50). This needn't be printed out but could be used for sorting and perhaps as a key field. This method can also be easier for processing. In many cases, the new field can be generated automatically, by an 'alphameric' to 'numerical' conversion from the principal field.
A similar device that I used when working on lists of medieval names with bizarre spellings was to assign a number in 10's or 20's to the preliminary sorted list. Then, when I wanted to transfer (say) Wotone (360) to follow Wootton (280), all that was needed was to alter the key number from 360 to 285.
Yours sincerely,
Nat Alcock - Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick,
Coventry, England
(msrbb@csv.warwick.ac.uk)
For other Newsletter articles concerning the use of electronic media in the humanities, consult the Subject index.
Table of Contents for the Winter, 1998 issue of the CSA Newsletter (Vol. X, no. 3)
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