[Mr Mushroom]

Can anyone reccomend a good Database App, preferably free, but I don't mind buying the right product.

Basically I run a band, and I want to be able to store all our songs, with the info that goes with them (Key/Composer/Artist/Lyrics etc) and be able to pull up for instance all songs by Stevie Wonder and then Print them.

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

Mush

[JKT]

iTunes.

Seriously. Create an user account for your band on your Mac and only use iTunes in that account for your band's tracks. I'm not so sure how easy it is to pull out the key/composer data for printing (thought the custom printing option below may be what you want for that), but for storage and searching. Very, very easy.

[Mr Mushroom]

I was probably misleading in my original post - I won't be actually storing any Music files/recordings - just the info such as Name/Key/Artist/Composer etc

Can you use Itunes for this without actually having a music file for each one?

[JKT]

Ah, probably not.

In that case, you may want to look at OpenOffice.org 2.0 for X11 which now includes a database module. No idea how good or easy it is to use, but it is free. There are probably others, but I don't know of them myself.

[mduell]

Free: Base
$300: FileMaker

[production_coordinator]

I would use a text file + spotlight

or

FileMaker

(Apple should include a low end FileMaker for OS X)

[SWFan]

You're pretty limited on the Mac. The only commercial database that I know of is FileMaker. Its a great database app, but will set you back around $300 to get it. But it will do everything you need to do.

On the free side, you could go with any of the Postregre/MySQL/other free SQL databases out there. Problem with those is that there is no front-end, so you'd need to know some kind of programming language to create your own front end such as C+ or PHP. Either than or you'll be doing raw SQL queries from a command prompt to enter and query data.

[tooki]

There's also 4D's 4th Dimension, but that's more complex and expensive than FileMaker Pro, both of which are way overkill for a simple thing like this.

If you happen to have AppleWorks, its database module is probably more than enough. (Yes, I realize AppleWorks is a dead end, but it can export to useful formats that could later move to another app.)

tooki

[JKT]

Edit: beaten to it by tooki... should have refreshed the thread before I posted.

[philm]

Have you got Excel. Excel can nicely handle lists/databases like the one you describe using its List Manager. Or better still, you could generate a Pivot Table in Excel to quickly and dynamically pull out the data you require.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by SWFan

On the free side, you could go with any of the Postregre/MySQL/other free SQL databases out there. Problem with those is that there is no front-end, so you'd need to know some kind of programming language to create your own front end such as C+ or PHP.

CocoaMySQL works fine for me. That actually sounds like exactly what he's looking for. Install MySQL and use CocoaMySQL to edit the database.

As another option, I'd take a look at Instiki. It's kind of a personal Wiki. Not exactly a database, but it could work if you find that more user-friendly than directly messing with a database.

[Maflynn]

I'd vote for excel if you already own ms office. A spreadsheet can make a very basic database.

If that is too basic and does not allow the funtionality that you need, I'd vote for mysql and a front end such as cocoamysql.