From: mos (mos99fastmail.fm)
Date: Tue Jan 06 2009 - 10:49:00 CST

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At 09:55 AM 1/6/2009, you wrote:

> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: ceol-i-e.com [mailto:ceol-i-e.com]
> >Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:47 AM
> >To: mysqllists.mysql.com
> >Subject: RE: how to design book db
> >
> >
> >Just theories here:
> >
> >
> >
> >The same book re-issued by another publisher might have a different
> >ISBN.
> >
> >
> >
> >A book with an insert (e.g., CDROM) may have a different ISBN, but be
> >the "same" for some purposes.
> >
> >
> >
> >And mistakes can be made...
> >
> >
> >
> >Ultimately, I suspect that the uniqueness of ISBN to what normal folks
> >call the "same book" is not as clear as one would hope.
> >
> >
>[JS] I'm really glad I was able to eavesdrop on this conversation. I had no
>idea the ISBN issue was so murky.
>
>For better or worse, most of "my" publishers don't use ISBNs; many of them
>don't even assign product numbers.
>
>I guess the only way around it is to assign your own unique key.

BTW, it might be worth while for PJ to look at how Amazon stores its data.
I don't think you can find an easier to use database for searching on
books. It looks like they store 2 ISBN numbers per book. It also appears
they use fulltext indexing on a lot of fields so the user can search on
anything.

Also check out http://www.abebooks.com/

re: ISBN numbers. If this application is for a used bookstore then you're
going to have to allow books without ISBN's because books from 40 years ago
of course don't have ISBN's.

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isbn.

Mike

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