Relations between items

I am new using this package, and I am still trying to figure out how to use it in the projects we are carrying out in our research group.

Currently, we have a big relational database in MySQL (with around 20 tables), and we are thinking about migrating it (or a part of it) to an Omeka system.

Te problem we found is about relationships in Omeka... For example, let us suppose we create two collections: artworks and authors, both of them will contain items (using the appropriate metadata types), and they must be linked in the way that the field "author" in the artwork must point out the item for the related author in the other collection.

Is it possible to make these relationships in Omeka directly? (by using the web interface)... Maybe it is explained in some place, but I couldn't find it.

Thanks a lot in advance, and congratulations for the work, it is really interesting and useful.

Hi fsancho,
Might the "relation" field in the Dublin Core metadata help with this? In that field you could link to the related item's unique URL.

Just a reminder, an item may only belong to one collection at a time. But using the relation field can point your visitors to other items. Or, you can create a tagging schema that will allow users to browse by an artist's name, medium, or by whatever keywords you choose.

Good luck,
Sheila

Hi Sheila,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

I think that using a tagging schema could be a little bit fuzzy, because I would like the link working from the "author" field of the "artwork" item to the "author" item(for example).

I was trying to use the "relation" field in the DC metadata for that... but I found some technical problems, because the information I store in it is textual information, not with the URL behaviour ... so, my question now is: must I "produce" the linking between items in the view of one of the items (making use of the "relation" field stored in it) or is there any way Omeka does that for me automatically?, maybe in the html box for "relation" input I can write some procedure to do that... In this case, does that mean that I can't make a real relational database in Omeka?

Could you please tell me where can I find information about how to make somthing like that?

By the way... it would be great if Omeka could "import" the structure of the relational database from Scribe (a tool closed to this project, I suppose)... maybe a plugin for the future...

Again, thanks a lot for your help and time.
Fernando

Hi Fernando,

I'm not clear how you exactly envision a plugin to use import data from Scribe, however I'd be happy to discuss it further if you post the idea on the developer mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/omeka-dev

Dave

Hi Dave,

I've just post in Omeka-dev something about the plugin for Scribe-Omeka migration... I hope it could be of interest.

Thanks a lot for everything.

Fernando