Got a smidgen of actual coding done today.
I'm puzzling over the best way of querying the DB. This one (as opposed to the slide db) is more complex and cannot be contained by a single view. For example, if I do an all-encompassing query for everything, like this:

SELECT * FROM view_characters_characters,view_events_characters,view_groups_characters,view_events_places WHERE 
view_groups_characters.citation LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_events_characters.citation LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_characters_characters.citation LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_events_places.citation LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_groups_characters.character_name LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_events_characters.character_name LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_characters_characters.primaryChar LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_characters_characters.relatedChar LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_characters_characters.relationship LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_events_characters.event_description LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_events_places.event_description LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_events_places.place_name LIKE "%Melisseus%" OR
view_groups_characters.group_name LIKE "%Melisseus%"

the query takes nearly 13 seconds to complete (indexing has not been done yet, however), and it's far from elegant.