Forum Academy Marketplace Showcase Pricing Features

How-to: Linked-in style connects in imdb-style site

Need help Database
#1

Hey everybody. Looking for an idea on how to structure this functionality.

Here’s the setup. I’ve got a site that allows users who perform in on-stage productions (musicals, plays, etc) to enter their ‘credits’. Think of it as IMDB for the stage. You create your ‘Person’. A person can have many Production Roles. Each Production Role is in a Production. A Production is produced by a Company in a Venue.

What I’m looking for is to be able to show ‘connections’ for each Person. In other words, how many Productions do you share with any other Person - a la Linked-In. So you should be able to go to a Person’s page and choose to show other Persons sorted by the number of shared Productions.

So what would be the best way to structure this? I don’t think this can be done on the fly through a query, I would need some kind of Thing that shows the number of connections with any other Person.

Thoughts?

btw - the site is I’m Kind of a Big Deal (ikbd.org)

#2

I need to be able to quickly search and show numbers so I’m thinking a Thing call Connections with the following fields:

  • Person (Type: Person)
  • Connection (Type: Person)
  • Productions (Type: List of Productions)
  • Count (Type: Number)

I’d have to add a either create a new Connection or update a Connection every time a Production Role is created for every other Production Role in that Production. That seems onerous. Doable, but too much?

Is there a better way?