More on Blenders & Manufacturers

I think this is a good idea, but keep in mind that most of us don’t know of too many blenders. We simply buy a pouch or tin and would know the manufacturer. If one field must be done first, let it be the Manufacturer field. I say this and I used to read Pipes & Tobaccos magazine faithfully. I can only imagine what others may or may not know.

Here is how it would work. I would take the current Brand/Manufacturer field and make sure that it only contained Brand Names, instead of a mixture of brands and manufacturers. Then I would import only that information to the new database, leaving us with shiny empty Blender and Manufacturer fields.

Next, I have a pretty complete list of actual tobacco manufacturers, so the Manufacturer could become a dropdown field when you add or update a blend, making it a lot easier to add.

Then, the Blender field stays a plain old text field, so when it is known who blended the tobacco, and there aren’t too many of those, it can be added.

So, when I move the database, we get better Brand names but we lose all the currently screwed up blenders and manufacturers. Make sense?

Having had a couple of in-depth conversations now with folks in the Pipe Tobacco business, I have made a few more decisions here about how to go about organizing this mess I’ve made:

1) Blends that were marketed only under one name (Kentucky Club) will get a Brand and a Blend name that match (Kentucky Club is a blend in brand Kentucky Club). This helps keep the Brand/Manufacturer confusion to a minimum.

2) Some Brands and Manufacturers will be identical (McClelland made by McClelland), most will not.

3) When the actual blender is known, the field will appear, when none has been associated with the blend, it will not appear, to keep down confusion about this field wrt Manufacturer.

4) Three fields means no longer having to choose which to display when both the manufacturer and blender are known for a blend in a brand (Haddo’s Delight is a G L Pease branded tobacco manufactured by Cornell & Diehl and blended by Gregory Pease). These cases are limited, but they represent what we should be aiming for as far as information about the blend.

5) The tables as they now exist are hopelessly confused, both by having three types of information in two fields, but also by not providing what is known as a ‘controlled taxonomy’ for them. In the future, both Brand and Manufacturer will be added to blend records via a dropdown menu (as Brand is done now). Potentially, Blenders will be done this way as well. This cuts down on future database confusion from having “Orlik”, “Orlik Tobacco”, “Orlik Tobacco S/A” and “Orlik Tobacco S|A” all in the database as Manufacturers. doing it this way opens up the possibility to search/sort on the manufacturer just as you now can on the Brand.

All of this requires more work than I had initially hoped for in the conversion, but it will result in a much better, more complete database going forward.

Additional Good News on this front. I have managed to extract the actual Blenders out of the munged tables so they can now be imported as well.

As it stands now, every blend will have a filled in and correct Brand, no Manufacturer info at all (but somewhere to put it) and a Blender, if there was one in the old database.

I think that is as good as it is going to get. We’re just going to have to recreate the Manufacturer info as we go.

Sounds great to me.

How about add the new fields, but leave the old one (for now) and the new “Blender” and “Manufacturer” fields don’t show up until someone fills in the NEW “Blender” (and possibly “Manufacturer”) field, at which point the old one goes away.

Thanks for all your hard work, Jon. We all appreciate it! With all the recycled “content” on the web these days (and folks like myself, who don’t post much content at all) we are all fortunate to have people with your dedication.
As a newcomer to pipe tobaccos, it is helpful to know as much about who makes it, where it comes from , etc., as possible. So, for what it’s worth, I think it’s great you’re going the extra mile with the blender and manufacturer info.

Jon….does that mean that we will be able to chase up all the blends manufactured by McClelland for other companies then?

@Poor Richard - I can’t really do that, as the real problem is with having datatypes in too many place, not in having too few datatypes. I have to straighten out the Brand table to actually reflect brands.

@Pipemanuk - Theoretically yes, though I will be relying on you guys to help me fill out the info. I certainly don’t know all of it myself.

I think this is a step in the right direction. It would also be nice to categorize the list under–straight virginias—latakia—orientals—vapers etc, similar to the excellent site at http://www.agingfaq.nocturne.org–see there.

Jon,

I think that you’ve got it exactly correct!
I’m very impressed! I’ve had to deal with
databases like this before in the seed industry.
The databases were my own, built from scratch,
and as I added more and more variables to them
and they grew and grew, and as I needed them
to do more and more stuff, I ended up going
through exactly what you describe here.

The only thing I can say is, yes, it will really
suck to do all the updating and hand work, but
also, yes, it WILL be worth it in the end. You
will REALLY like the results. (And I’m betting
that we will, too!)

Thanks,
Doug Pearson

@Doug:

Thanks for the cheering words. I am daily revisiting all of the bad db design decisions I have made over the years with this project.

Perhaps, as someone who has gone through this, you wouldn’t mind a few questions along the way? I have a couple of items I am struggling with.

Jon,

Ask away! Mind you, I may not be a good resource as far as the nuts & bolts, but I think I can troubleshoot ideas . . .

If you want to do this off-list, e-mail me at
pearsond -at- odsgc -dot- net

– Doug Pearson

Thank you for all the hard work you’re doing. Most of us can’t even begin to imagine what you are going through in order to provide all of us with a better and much improved forum.

I do have a question. This morning I was reading a review and then wanted to look up all the reviews written by this reviewer. When I began to search for his name I found that they were not in alphabetic order within the letter category. For example, let’s say I was looking up a reviewer named “Rudd”. I would look under the R’s but within the R’s the name Rudd would not be alphabitized. It may appear first, followed by Rastun, Reich, Rhoades, Renn, Roundtree, and Raymond. Is there any way that the reviewers could be alphabitized so in the above example Rastun would appear first, followed by Raymond, etc. I hope you understand what I mean. If this would create much more work then don’t do it because it is something we can live without however, I was just curious and wanted to ask the question.

sounds fine, but there may be additional problems, as it is almost impossible to tell who is actually manufacturing certain brands. rattray’s, for instnce, is a k&k product, but at least some, like marlin flake, is manufactured by orlik. others may be of proper k&k origin (or not). furthermore, i think production is sometimes shifted from one major manufacturer to another, as in the case of murray -> orlik. how to keep track of that mess? :-/

I’m new to this Forum and this is my first post. I hope this is a good place for this. If not, I am asking the moderator to let me know if my post is an aceptable one for this Forum.

My interest in addition to reviews, is saucing my own tobacco blends. I order a specified mixture (unsauced) from Cornel and Diehl (C&D) and then create numerous sauces. Through experimentation, I have come up with some excellent results. I prefer “mild-aromatics”. If any one else has an interest in “saucing” I am interested in sharing information with you. And, I am always eager to learn.

Rather than blog a bunch about my methods, formulas and sources, I’ll await replies, if any and follow up later.

Yes I agree with this - I buy a lot of blends via mail order from uktobacco.com and these come under generic names such as USA VANILLA, Golden Chocolate. It would be nice to be able to find out more about these mixtures and the countless others on offer.

I became frustrated by buying tobacco that I did not really enjoy. Therefore, I decided to learn what I could about saucing and preparing sauces to apply to “raw” unsauced tobacco mixtures that I desired to flavor. I have had excellent results. I’m like a chef in a kitchen who doesn’t really know much about cooking! But, I’m having fun with saucing my own favorite blends of raw tobacco and pipe smoking friends have gotten to enjoy some of my results (experiments). For example, my latest is called “SPINNAKER” and is a tobacco blend of Burley, Virginia and Cavidish I got from C&D. I made a sauce of vanilla, almond and cinnamon. I surprised myself and others with the results.