Schema:authors

Schema Summary

+--------------------+------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field              | Type       | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+--------------------+------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| author_id          | int        | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| author_canonical   | mediumtext | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                |
| author_legalname   | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_birthplace  | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_birthdate   | date       | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_deathdate   | date       | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| note_id            | int        | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_wikipedia   | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_views       | int        | YES  |     | 0       |                |
| author_imdb        | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_marque      | int        | NO   |     | 0       |                |
| author_image       | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_annualviews | int        | NO   |     | 0       |                |
| author_lastname    | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_language    | int        | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| author_note        | mediumtext | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+--------------------+------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

Description

The authors table directly replicates the old ISFDB author record format. Under the old ISFDB format we only used an author record when something about the author was known; under the new ISFDB format there is an author record for every author referenced by the database. This change is needed to support author normalization.

• author_id - Unique record id for the author table.

• author_canonical - Author's canonical name.

• author_legalname - Author's legal name in the "family name, given name" format.

• author_birthplace - The birthplace of the author. Should contain City, State, Country.

• author_birthdate - The birth date of the author. May be of the form YYYY-00-00 or YYYY-MM-DD if known.

• author_deathdate - The death date of the author. May be of the form YYYY-00-00 or YYYY-MM-DD if known.

• note_id - The ID of this author's note in the "notes" table. No longer used.

• author_wikipedia - This column holds a URL to the author's Wikipedia entry, if one exists.

• author_views - The number of times this author's bibliography has been viewed.

• author_imdb - URL to the author's IMDB entry. No longer used.

• author_marque - Indicates the relative popularity of the author. Periodically recalculated based on the author_views value above. If set to a non-zero value, this author's forthcoming books will be eligible for display on the front page.

• author_image - URL of the author's image.

• author_annualviews - The number of times this author's bibliography has been viewed in the current calendar year.

• author_lastname - The family name of the author. Automatically derived from the author's canonical name when the author is first added to the database, but may be edited later on. Only used to alphabetize lists of authors and build the author directory.

• author_language - The author's working language, i.e. the language of most of his or her works. Pointer to the "languages" table.

• author_note - A free text bibliographic note about the author and the sources used to compile the data. May contain brief biographical data.