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Thread: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

  1. #1

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    Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    Hi guys,

    i'm living in a sharing apartment with 5 guys and noone of us has a HDD to be able to share out music and keep our music storage up to date.
    So, since I'm learning Visual Basic (also have a bit knowledge in Java..), I thought that I could create a Database which should be used to upload music files to, no matter on which computer you are; so we need a network database.
    Here are 6 computers/laptop, on all running Windows 7.

    As I don't know how to start, I thought I could receive some help on here. I even don't know what database to take, mySQL?

    The task of the database:
    No matter what computer you use, you should be able to upload and download files to/from the database! (Even possible with mobile phones?! Can the server be online, even if the computer on which the database is installed is turned off? Probably not..?)

    The GUI will be done by me, using Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate, so the program code (hope I will get help on this since I'm a newcomer).


    I'd appreciate every kind of help and hope that anyone will company me during that long, depressing but cool progress!

    At last, does it actually make sense to deploy Visual Basic in this scenario?

  2. #2
    Smooth Moperator techgnome's Avatar
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    Re: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    if you don't have the room for the music as it is, where are you going to store it? because you're not going to have the room for the database either... especially if you plan to actually store the music IN the database (I don't recommend this).

    that said, if you want to have a common computer that stores all of the music and a database catalog of the music, sure, you could create an app that allows you to browse the catalog, select files and download them to the local computer... if your'e thinking something more peer-to-peer and not having a single, consolidated central storage location... also possible, but it make get a little more tricky, as you'll have to make sure that someone always has a copy of what ever at any given time. (IE, if Billy has a copy of a song that Jimmy wants, and Jimmy downloads it to his machine, then a couple days later, clears out his music because Steve has something, there needs to be a way to make sure that Billy didn't also delete his copy of the song - he may think it's safe because Jimmy's got it. -- did that make sense?)

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  3. #3
    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    Quote Originally Posted by techgnome View Post
    if you don't have the room for the music as it is, where are you going to store it? because you're not going to have the room for the database either... especially if you plan to actually store the music IN the database (I don't recommend this).
    You can use SQL Server with FILESTREAM turned on. That way, to an application it looks like the file data is stored in the database itself but the database server actually stores it externally. The database server can even create a network share for the data. You obviously still need the space to store the data though.

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    Serge's Avatar
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    Re: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    I wouldn't recommend storing files as a FILESTREAM unless you are planning on "searching" through contents. Filestream was created to help people to have ability to search contents of files. In the old days we saved files on disk in some directory and have a path in the database that points to a directory/filename. FILESTREAM is great if you need to store files like excel, pdf, word etc and have ability to search through contents of those files using SQL statements (using filters), instead of writing your own client functionality to do so. Besides, setting up FILESTREAM is not a walk in a park, especially for a db novice.

  5. #5
    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    Quote Originally Posted by Serge View Post
    I wouldn't recommend storing files as a FILESTREAM unless you are planning on "searching" through contents. Filestream was created to help people to have ability to search contents of files. In the old days we saved files on disk in some directory and have a path in the database that points to a directory/filename. FILESTREAM is great if you need to store files like excel, pdf, word etc and have ability to search through contents of those files using SQL statements (using filters), instead of writing your own client functionality to do so. Besides, setting up FILESTREAM is not a walk in a park, especially for a db novice.
    I'm no DBA but that doesn't sound right to me. It sounds like you're talking about Full Text Search rather than FILESTREAM. From what I understand, FILESTREAM is provided as a way for applications to store large chunks of binary data, usually the contents of files, in the database without their actually being stored in the database file, thus preventing the database file growing excessively large and slow to use while still allowing applications to access the binary data easily and seamlessly. Setting up FILESTREAM is a matter of checking a box during SQL Server installation or later selecting an item from a drop-down in the instance properties.

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    Re: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    Thanks for the answers that are given

    So of course there's still the question opened:"Where to store it"? Well, at first, I want to store it on my external HDD which has a capacity of 500GB. It's not much, but well, better than nothing. In a few months, I will upgrade my storage to a NAS Server which will have more than 20TB, because movies, pictures and a lot of other media files will be stored there too.

    I guess jmcilhinney is right. FILESTREAM can be used for my issue, though I read something about BLOB during my researches but didn't understand it, that's why I switched back to FILESTREAM.

    Are there any good, free Database programs except mySQL?

    @ techgnome: Yeah, right! You got it. Thanks for giving me the hint. Well... couldn't I resolve that problem just like this?: Whenever a person uploads a file, it's saved/stored in the database. There is no automatically synchronization, which means that, e.g. if I want a file from Jimmy, he has to upload it so I can download it. The file is uploaded and stored in the database. However, as it is stored in the database, he can delete it. Whenever he wants this file again, he can just download it from the database. But he can't delete it froom the database, since I'm the admin and wants to maintain the DB.
    So all in all: any transaction is done via DB, which means that all transferred files are saved in the DB, just like a backup.
    Does that make sense right now?

  7. #7
    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Creating a Music Storage Network Database?

    One thing about FILESTREAM that I haven't researched is if and how you tell it where to store the files. I've never done it so there's obviously a default location but I've never actually seen a way to set it explicitly.

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