Thanks a ton Jerry. You're incredibly helpful.

A tasty BSOD erased the long waffly reply I composed yesterday. Probably not a bad thing actually! I'll still paste the screengrabs anyway in case someone finds them useful.

Here is where I see MM assets listed:



Here is where I see MM tags listed:



Here is where some significant relationships happen:



It seems to me that one should be able to connect to this thing with Access and actually input data through it, once the effort has been put into working out how all the relationships take place.

In terms of getting tables out for my stock footage rep, time for me to do some swotting up on how to build SQL queries. Cheers!

Hey Nick:

It seems to me that one should be able to connect to this thing with Access and actually input data through it, once the effort has been put into working out how all the relationships take place.

Yes, that is exactly what Microsoft Access (or Open Office Base) can do for you!

In the table dbo.item you have a field named Id. In the dbo.property table you have a field name ItemId. This is one possible link between these tables. Note that 1070 exists in both tables.

In dbo.item the Id is probably unique, which would make it a Record Key. In the dbo.property table the ItemId is not unique, so we know that's not the Record Key. However the field Id appears to be unique in dbo.property so that's probably the Record Key.

From your example, I can also see a probably link between the dbo.propertyType and dbo.property tables.

If you have Open Office Base, see if there is a tutorial on how to create a database, add tables, and establish relationships. I tested Base before I purchased Access. I had a client with huge data tables so ultimately I bought Access, but Base seemed okay for smaller data tables.

Kimberly

Sounds good, but before I can head down that route, I still have the problem of the Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator not offering me any SQL servers to connect to, even though MM is running. Any ideas?

Nick, Here's a copy of suggestions.

1) I know it's buried in my screenprint, but you could start with this SQL:
SELECT item.fullpath, propertytype.displayname, property.valuestring
FROM item
INNER JOIN property
ON item.id=property.itemid
INNER JOIN propertytype
ON property.propertytypeid = propertytype.id
WHERE (property.valuestring is not null) and (item.fileextension = 'veg')

You'll want to modify the WHERE clause to something other than item.fileextension = 'veg' and you'll probably want to SELECT addtional columns, but this should be a good starting point.

2) As far as you database access problems are concerned, suggest three things:
...a) Over on the left side of your management studio panel, make sure your server icon is showing green, not red. Otherwise, right click and start.
...b) You might have to right click on the "Default" database and select "New Query"
...c) A shot-in-the dark - try starting Vegas (& Media Manger) before you make your query.

Good Luck!
...Jerry

I finally managed to add a system DSN by typing "DELL-M6300\SONY_MEDIAMGR2" in the "Server" field. I was then able to connect to the database via ODBC in Open Office Base. Don't know what I'm doing in there yet, so it's tutorials time now. One step at a time.... Cheers!