Current Schema

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Much of this page is based on earlier documentation by Peter Croome.

publishers [Publisher class in new site]
DB Column Name in New Code Description Usage Notes
ID id DB-generated primary key. In the lasso-based site, this is the number you see in URLs like http://www.comics.org/publisher_details.lasso?id=4066 It is generated by the database and has no inherent meaning.
PubName name Name of the publisher, imprint, or set of imprints Because imprints are not stored per-issue, in some cases a semicolon-separated list of imprints corresponding to all imprints used for a given series has been given an entry in this table. Also, not all things that we term "Publishers" or "Imprints" strictly fall into those categories, and we do not accurately reflect the evolution of company names over time (for instance, "DC" was not until fairly recently the official name of the company, although it was long an informal name. It is still not exactly correct- "DC Comics" appears to be the current legal name. But "DC" is what everyone knows, so that is what appears in the database).
YearBegan year_began Year (by cover date) of first publication.
YearEnded year_ended Year (by cover date) of last publication, if any.
CountryID country The country from which the publisher operates. Foreign key into the Countries table.
Notes notes Space for arbitrary notes.
web url The URL for the publisher's website. While this column sometimes has data, it does not appear to be used by the Lasso-based site.
AlphaSortCode alpha_sort_code A single character. Appears to be used to sort related publishers near each other even if the more obvious alphabetical sort would not do so. It's a touch unclear.
ImprintCount imprint_count Count of how many imprints a given publisher has. Does not appear to be uniformly accurate.
BookCount series_count Count of how many series this publisher publishes. Does not appear to be uniformly accurate.
IssueCount issue_count Total number of issues in all series published by the publisher. Does not appear to be uniformly accurate.
Master is_master Boolean field. Appears to indicate if something is a publisher or an imprint. Or more generally, a first-class publishing entity or one that is somehow part of a larger entity (because it was bought long ago, or is part of a group of companies commonly referred to by another name, etc). The new site mostly ignores this in favor of checking for rows with a matching parent id.
Connection connection No clue. It's a varchar, though. Perhaps it's supposed to explain the nature of each publisher-to-publisher relationship? Always null or in one case an empty string in the current data dump, so pretty clearly not used.
ParentID parent Self-join key for parent/child relationships. This is how the imprints for a publisher are stored.
NextID next Self-join key, purpose unknown. Does not appear to be in use.
created created Row creation timestamp.
Modified modified One of two change timestamps. No idea which one the Lasso site actually uses.
Updated updated One of two change timestamps. No idea which one the Lasso site actually uses.