Need to make a booking system, hardly know where to start!

I know we (me included!) hate questions which are very general but I've got about zilch experience in the DB side of things so here's my scenario anyway.

We have a showroom/lab area with about a dozen printers, pcs, macs, of various types. These get used by salespeople for customer demos, by software analysts for testing and developing customer apps, by trainers for running training... etc etc.

So the ask in simple terms is how to construct a DB to take care of the bookings. ie, machine serial number 123 is booked Friday 1400-1600 by Joe for a dem; machine 456 is booked the whole week for a course; machine 789 is bust and the parts won't be here till Julember.

We're thinking of making it graphical.. I did Beacon's tut on images in a db. So I can make the db to have an entry for each machine, with picture, serial number, ip address, description etc. I envisage for example, scrolling thru the pics to the m/c I want, double click the pic to get the booking status... I see a dtpicker fitting in here somewhere but that's about as much as I can see so far.

I really don't know how to construct the other table/s I would need, which will contain the times, with a field for available, booked for dem, broken, stolen etc.... All machines have a unique serial number which could serve as the key between the tables.

I don't expect anyone to write this for me, but just some thoughts on you need a table with blah & blah, and another with more blah & blah. Or links to somewhere, like more tuts.

TIA!

Jim

I would start with tables such as this.

Booking Type:
i.e.

ID [Long, Not Null, Incremented, Primary Key]
Booking Description [varchar(50), Not Null]

1 Demo
2 Testing
3 Training
4 Broken

Machines:
i.e

ID [Long, Not Null, Incremented, Primary Key]
Machine Description [varchar(50), Not Null]

1 234
2 786
3 567

Then the main table would be Bookings

ID [Long, Not Null, Incremented, Primary Key]
Booking Type [Long, Not Null] (ID from Booking Type table)
Machine [Long, Not Null] (ID from Machines table)
DateFrom [datetime, Not Null]
DateTo [datetime, Not Null]


Hope this is of use Jim

Off hand, I think you'll need tables for (and I really hope nested lists work):
[code]
Machines
* Code (Primary Key)
* Description of some sort
* Operational
* ImageCode

Images
* Code (PK)
* Description
* Actual image

Rooms (for where the [insert action here] occurs
* Code (PK)
* Description

Operators
* Code (PK)
* Name
* Department (or something else to distinguish what he/she does)

Bookings
* Code (PK - really just for quick searches)
* BookedFrom
* BookedTo

BookingOperators (Link table for bookings & what people/operators will be "taken up")
* BookingCode
* OperatorCode

BookingMachines (ditto above, but with machines, in case you have several booked at a time)
* BookingCode
* MachineCode



BTW, otherwise, how's things your side Jim?

[edit]
Nested lists don't work :mad:
[/edit]

axion_sa structure is much better.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Gary.Lowe
axion_sa structure is much better.

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Your's ain't so bad either :) Thanks hey

Thanks Lads... that's enough to get my mind kickstarted I guess!

OK my side Brian, thanks! Getting used to the traffic slowly, since the office move. Worst part is, I drive right past the old office to get onto the m'way at Eastgate! My journey's only starting then. There's been a few awful pile ups on the N3 lately as I'm sure you've seen and heard... that then affects the R24 from the airport which I use. What a ballache.

Sounds rather [I would say ballache, but I haven't the foggiest what it means :p ]. I feel your pain - we take the N12 (or is it N3) to Bedfordview, and those accidents by PPC...