Sorry if anyone's been waiting - work's been hectic.
I'll try not to pollute the list too much, but it's kind of fun getting
opinions from seasoned, talented Firebird developers...:-)

OK. Addressing a few issues:
Dariusz Zelichowski raised the issue:

> At the same time I guess it would be very useful at this
> stage of the game to decide what's being played here. Some
> hotels also operate as spas, some spas have little do
> with how hotels operate. And then there are private clubs
> which have a lot o do with spas but nothing to do with
> hotels. Big mess.

> So, are we doing a hotel management? spa? club? property
> (yet another species)?

> Or are we trying to do all of them, which would be huge
> task, and if developed by a commercial company. I would
> estimate the cost to be at about $10 million.

Hmm, this is worthy of serious thought.
Seeings it's a very casual experiment, trying to do a massive system is just
silly. We don't have a management structure, so I suggest we keep it VERY
SIMPLE!!
On the other hand, it'd be nice to build it extensible enough that people
could use it as a starting point...but I think we should keep it's focus as
small as possible, so at least we have a chance of completing it in this
environment.

Dariusz Zelichowski also suggested many ideas for the company table, and
room table extensions.
I've been thinking about extensibility, and possibly taking his ideas a step
further, and using Property->Value tables, so both company and room 'tags'
can be infinitely extended/expanded upon...dunno yet, more thought.

Martijn Tonies raised a few issues regarding address info in the company
table, phone numbers for departments, a country source table, and the use of
flags (Yes/No) fields in tables.
Thinking about the requirement of searching the flag fields, an index is not
going to help(only two values - a full table scan is a very real
possibility)
Thusly I suggest the flags for room features like AirCon, TV/DVD, Spa Bath
be broken out into the Property->Value tables as well.
Allows any number of features to be added to a room with no schema changes:
Room 23->TV/DVD->Yes
Room 23->Spa bath->Yes

I shall cut some more code at lunch time: 1.5 hours time...tick,tick,tick

Nige.

Nigel Weeks
Tech Support & Systems Developer
nweeks@...
www.examiner.com.au
71 - 75 Paterson Street
Launceston
Tasmania 7250
Australia
Phone: 03 6336 7234