Theatre Database Available Again

I’ve managed to get my little database of theatrical productions I’ve been involved with back up, after an extended period of not being able to remember my MySQL password (thanks, ICDSoft tech support!). It’s part of my ongoing relationship with theatre – the small-scale, amateur, just-for-fun kind.

I now need to update a lot of the information in the database. It was set up as an exercise in PHP and MySQL, but I would like to get it moving again. Many of the links are broken, and I would like to add more information, and if possible integrate it more into the rest of the site.

Regarding that last one, it would be great if there were a WordPress plugin that could manage the realtionships I have in my custom database. There are a few that deal with theatre bookings, company schedules, but none that cover the full extent of what I want. I shall explain.

What I have in this database (here’s a dump of all the raw data):

  • Table containing information about Groups or Theatre Companies
    • Name of group
    • URL of homepage
    • etc
  • Table containing information about Venues
    • Name of Venue
    • URL of homepage
    • etc
  • Table containing information about Roles
    • Name of role
    • Onstage or Offstage (to cover backstage work such as lights and sound)
    • etc
  • Table containing information about Performances
    • Name of show
    • Author
    • Blurb
    • Dates (either exact or just a quarter)
    • etc
  • Table containing Links to other information about a Performance
    • URL

Relationships (created by the queries at the time of page creation):

  • Each Performance is related to a single Venue and a single Group. Not every Group has its own Venue, so these had to be kept separate. This is where most of the plugins and tools for managing show data fall down. They assume that a Theatre Company has a Theatre where they do Theatre. Most groups I’ve been involved with have not. (The “get-in” and “get-out” are often the most fun parts of a show week).
  • Each Performance may be related to multiple Roles. This is to cover the possibility that I may have had more than one Role in a show, including roles on and offstage, for example designing the poster, or helping build the set.
  • Each Performance may be related to multiple Links, which point to resources like an image of the flyer, a show website, or a photo gallery. This is to allow multiple resources to be connected.

Fancy graph!

[graphviz]
digraph Theatre_Database_Structure {
fontname=courier
node[shape=box,style=rounded,color=gray50,fontname=courier]
edge[color=orange,style=bold]

tcv_performances -> tcv_theatres [label=theatre_id,fontname=courier]
tcv_performances -> tcv_groups [label=group_id,fontname=courier]
tcv_performances -> tcv_perf_links [label=perf_id,fontname=courier]
tcv_roles -> tcv_performances [label=perf_id,fontname=courier]

label=”Theatre Database Structure”
}
[/graphviz]
Any ideas for what I could do next? Anyone know of a good WordPress plugin along these lines (that doesn’t fall foul of the requirements above? Anyone want to help me get this information more presentable? What I definitely need is a way of entering and editing information in the database without burrowing into PHPMyAdmin and doing open-table surgery.

The question of whether I want to ever add some new performances to the database remains open…