Re: Reservation System Design

"Gary" <gholt_at_nospam.chartermi.net> wrote in message news:FVzlf.1318$C46.1258_at_fe02.lga...
> I have posted a similar request on comp.databases.
>
> I need some ideas on a mySQL database design for a reservation system,
> much like a doctor's office (hopefully without the long wait).
>
> My client has 12 work areas. She wants her clients to be able to sign up
> for sessions at these areas on-line. The clients will sign up for either
> 1.5 or 2 hours, and she only wants 4 people to be able to start every
> half hour.
>
> I would like to avoid having to iterate through every half hour of every
> day to determine if there are available opennings that the client could
> sign up for.
>
> My initial thought was to have a table of sessions, which had a field
> for start time and end time, then use a COUNT query to find out how many
> users had a start time at that half hour, but we need to present the
> user with a view of which time slots are available for each half hour.
> Since the interface is via the internet, I am afraid that this will
> require a lot of data to be sent back and forth.
>
> I also thought, from a performance point of view, it may be more
> efficient to de-normalize the database and create a table with a record
> for each half hour that would store the number of people who have signed
> up for that half hour. This would make the query for the calander a lot
> simpler, but could possibly make syncronizing the data more difficult,
> and could the table get rather large. I could possibly purge records
> from this table for dates in the past, since only future time slots
> would have any importance.
>
>
> If anyone has any experience doing a database like this, I would really
> appreciate some assistance.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Gary Holt

Take a look at www.databaseanswers.com and see if there are any reservation systems there. That might give you some ideas. Received on Wed Dec 07 2005 - 15:35:11 CET