Thursday, December 6, 2012

The weird X-Wing series or Why do we model data?

Intro

Oregami is designed to become an interactive database for computer and video games, with a similar complexity like the Internet Movie Database  has for TV and film. Thus, if we talk about Oregami we quickly drift to our data model - or technical model - and to the statement that this ominous model shall be better than that of any existing video game database. But why that? What is a data model, actually, and why the heck is it not enough for us what MobyGames and TheLegacy offer?

Now our beloved hobby brings along a real mountain of data: computer and video games have a title, belong to one or more genres, are published for different systems in different versions at different times, even in different countries, and so on and so forth. We want the users to be able to enter all these data into our database, but that alone clearly isn't enough. If the user checks a game entry, he / she may exemplary want to learn the systems it was released on and when. If one visits a compilation entry the included games shall be visible, and with one more click every of those game entries must be reachable for more information. Or which games of a certain genre have been released on a certain system within a given time frame?