Question

Simple booking system; database design / relationships / tables / normalisation.

Asked by: jumphog

Hello experts, I've posted this in under access (which I'm most familiar with) but it's more a design question than specifically for access.  I've spent a lot of time thinking around this (mostly quite some time ago) so would welcome some direction, as not a DBA type person!

So what's the best way to design a database for the following;

Goal: To take, and track customer details / payments, and manage event date bookings for (let's say) a hot air ballon company...

So you've got your customers who are making a booking, which may be for themselves or someone else - or even for a number of other participants which may or may not include themselves.  This will usually be for a date but they can also get vouchers (which we need to track, of course!)  They may also be paying in a variety of ways (deposits / in full etc...) - and other people may get added to a specific date's booking at a later date.

Obviously there is a limit on number of available places for each day.

Also with ballooning the weather may not be suitable on any given day, so they may need to rebook for a later date - possibly a number of times - so it would be good to keep track of the dates for which the participants have previously booked! - this is the main bit I'm trying to work out - where / how to most efficiently keep track of the dates, and the changes to them etc etc....

So we will be looking up by a date to see a list of who is booked on that day.
we will be looking by customers or by participants to see for when they are booked, how they paid, redeemed vouchers, address etc,,,,
we will be looking up by vouchers to see what's outstanding and not redeemed as yet.

Any suggested table's / relationship ideas very welcome (as you can tell from the points!)

e.g. table for CUSTOMERS (that booked a 'party' (maybe only 1 person, even themselves)  related to a table for PARTICIPANTS etc...

Many thanks in advance...

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Asked On
2007-07-12 at 11:48:27ID22692623
Tags

booking

,

system

,

database

,

access

,

design

Topics

Databases Miscellaneous

,

Microsoft Access Database

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: stevbePosted on 2007-07-12 at 12:28:13ID: 19475239

One thing to consider from a business perspective ... you might want to track not only that the date changes but also track why it changed ... bad weather, deposit bounced, equipment failure, changed their minds, had a parachute accident, date was keyed incorrectly, etc.

tblParty   - this is your flight master ... you only need to track *who* paid for it.
PartyID
PartyDepartureDate
PartyBookedDate
PartyFlightDate
CustomerID
As for date changes ... you could add a field for *reason* and maybe to keep from having to do MAX(FlightDate)  sub-selects for all your queries add a status field to track which are the *real* records to be used as a simple filter.

tblCustomer - ... all booking customers and all participants
CustomerID
CustomerName

 

by: GRayLPosted on 2007-07-12 at 12:40:34ID: 19475376

Just a start.  At a minimum these tables:

Customers
========
CustID
LName
FName
Add1
Add2
etc.

Clients
=====
ClientID
OrgName
ContactLName
ContactFName
etc.

Bookings
=======
BookID
CustID - from Customers
ClientID - from Clients
ClientRateID
BookDate
ReBooked - boolean YN
etc.

Insert a new record when re-booking and check the Rebooked field.

Billings
======
BillID
BookID
AmtDue
DateDue
DatePaid
etc.

Northwind, the mdb that came with Access had a lot of good tips and info into what you are trying to do.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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