Re: Dealer List

Posted by BigKev On 2009/8/13 15:10:10

My $.02 on this:

I would think the first task on this is to get as many dealer names as possible with as much or little detail that accompanies them.

I think the most basic information as a place holder in the database would be:

Dealer Name, City, State.

Once we have that as a place holder then the other information could be back filled at a later date. Things like actual address is also important from a building historical perspective, but keep in mind that a dealer may have moved during their time as Packard Dealer. So a 1934 address my be relevant to someone with a 34 Packard purchased from them, but not someone with a '56 if they were shown to have moved.

So what I purpose is the following:

Construct a basic key table of Dealers that contains nothing more than Dealer Name, City, and State.

From that we add historical entry information to it as information is discovered. Things like known address in '34. Moved to new address in '41, etc, changed ownership in '51. Became a Packard dealer in '30, added Studebaker in '54, Dealer closed in '56. Obviously these are just quick things I jotted down and the actual Historic entries would be more detailed and could include pictures. Basically all this extra information is added into the historical table. So when a Dealer is queried, all the relevant historic entries that go with it are also displayed.

Also once we have a the basic bare-bones dealer table created with as many dealers as possible in it (Dealer Name, City, State), then we can hook that up to the Owner Registry. So if someone knows that a car was bought at a specific dealer, then that could be auto-linked back and forth. So for example when you are viewing someone's Registry entry, you could see what dealer they bought it from. Also if you were looking at a specific Dealer entry, perhaps we can list all of the cars in the registry that were tagged as being from that dealer.

With all of these projects, it's better to start with the basic common information that will be present for every dealer, and then layer on the extended detail over time. Otherwise it becomes a HUGE project that never gets done. Think about how long it has been since Packard shut it's doors, and no one in all those years has put together even that basic list yet. It's because folks get to stuck in the details, and give up. KISS (Keep in Simple Stupid) should be applied here.