Database Basics

[Tom Cole]

Dear Revolutionaries,

I made a sort of flat database with tons of redundancy in HyperCard to 
track all of the birds I have seen for many years. I love it, but it's 
time to move it to OSX and make it more efficient. I can easily convert 
most of the data to comma delimited records like the following with 
four items to sort: birdname,date,place,notes

Abert's Towhee,8/8/1971,Cotton Fields Safford Arizona,scratching in an 
arroyo
Abert's Towhee,10/23/1971,Headlight Pond,mask particularly dark
Abert's Towhee,11/27/1971,Verde River,heard only in the mesquite
Acorn Woodpecker,12/22/1971,Mount Ord,spectacular sighting
American Water Pipit/01/04/1972,Phoenix Sewer Flats,odd he was on a 
fencepost
Band-tailed Pigeon,01,20,1972,Sunset Crater Arizona,high in the 
ponderosas

I'm experienced with revolution and want to make the front end 
interface using my familiar scripting -- then I can blaze away. But 
imagine the above list with 17,757 lines. That's how many individual 
birds I have seen and recorded. The field sorts fast in Rev by item 
(date, birdname, etc.) in the field but that's about all I can do. I 
realize belatedly that I don't know how the heck to make this database. 
I want to filter out all the birds seen in a particular place on a 
particular date and have that appear somewhere and endless things like 
that.

Is it possible to filter information quickly with 17757 records in a 
field?  I know that's what SQL for (as the backend I think you call 
it), but does Rev have the power to allow me to stay happily in Rev?

Forgive my ignorance on this. I guess you might advise me to learn SQL. 
If so, then if there is an easy layout or flow chart that might help, 
that would be great. I tried a couple of the tutorials on SQL available 
at runrev.com, but remain kind of stuck. What's an easy book perhaps 
with a simple hands-on project?

Thanks
Tom