Creating a LibreOffice Music Database
Tune Finder
LibreOffice Calc and Base are all you need to create a simple database for organizing the songs in your music collection.
MySQL is the most commonly used open source database management system. Developers often use MySQL and its cousin MariaDB to build database applications for organizing office records, managing inventories, and other common tasks. However, MySQL is often too complex and too much trouble for personal, home-office uses. LibreOffice offers a simpler alternative for users who just want to create a small, simple database to address a specific need. This article describes how to create a quick and easy database solution using LibreOffice tools. In this case, I'll show you how to set up a music database from an iTunes library.
The Plan
I'll use two tools from the LibreOffice integrated suite to create my music database: LibreOffice Calc (spreadsheet) and LibreOffice Base (database management). With these two applications plus iTunes, the general process is as follows:
- Export library from iTunes as a tab-separated text file.
- Import library into LibreOffice Calc for minor edits.
- Copy modified library data into LibreOffice Base.
- Create SQL queries.
- Run queries and filters to display results.
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