Beginning SQL

Chapter 1
38
Finally, you need to assign each film a category — for example, horror, action, romance, and so on.
The following table outlines the Films table’s contents:
Field Name Data Type Notes
FilmId integer Primary key
FilmName varchar(100)
YearReleased integer
PlotSummary varchar(2000) Change to memo data type if using MS Access or to
the text data type if using MySQL
AvailableOnDVD char(1)
Rating integer
CategoryId integer Foreign key
Before going further, there are two points to note regarding the field definitions. First, the PlotSummary
field is a varchar data type, except when used in MS Access, which only supports varchar with a size
of up to 255 characters. Because you need to store up to 2000 characters, you must use Access’s memo
field, which allows you to store up to 65,536. You can’t specify length; it’s set at a maximum of 65,536
characters, which is equivalent to a varchar(65536) data type.
The second point to note pertains to the CategoryId field. It is a foreign key field, which means that its
value is the primary key field in another table, and it provides a way of relating the two tables. The table
containing the primary key to which the Films table links is the FilmCategory table, which you will create
shortly. First, though, the SQL to create the Films table is as follows:
CREATE TABLE Films
(
FilmId integer,
FilmName varchar(100),
YearReleased integer,
PlotSummary varchar(2000),
AvailableOnDVD char(1),
Rating integer,
CategoryId integer
);
After creating the Films table, you can create the FilmCategory table, which contains the following data:
Field Name Data Type Notes
CategoryId integer Primary key
Category varchar(100)