Scheduling Database - Design Help!

[Trevor.D.Matthews]

I need to develop a scheduling app and am having trouble with the
database
design. I can easily design a table hold appointments with start and
finish
times, but I always have an issue when it comes time to searching for
free
time.

The search examples:
Find the first available appointment in September
Find the first afternoon appointment
etc...

Should appointments be linked similar to a linked list? Should I create
a
row for each 5 or 10 or 15 minute slice of the day for every day and
then
just search for null in a 'used' field? This could grow way to fast.

If you need a more specific example to understand I can provide that,
but I
wanted to keep this as short as possible.

If anyone has experience designing a scheduling DB then please post
your
expoeriences.

Thanks

[Daniel Dittmar]

Tr************* **@gmail.com wrote:

I need to develop a scheduling app and am having trouble with the
database
design. I can easily design a table hold appointments with start and
finish
times, but I always have an issue when it comes time to searching for
free
time.

The search examples:
Find the first available appointment in September
Find the first afternoon appointment
etc...

Should appointments be linked similar to a linked list? Should I create
a
row for each 5 or 10 or 15 minute slice of the day for every day and
then
just search for null in a 'used' field? This could grow way to fast.

You could create a table TIMESLOTS holding all possible slots (start of
a x minute slice). You could then join it with the APPOINTMENTS table.

SELECT slot from TIMESLOTS, APPOINTMENTS
where not (TIMESLOTS.SLOT between APPOINTMENTS.ST ARTTIME and
APPOINTMENTS.EN DTIME)

You could add conditions on the time and on the people you want to
schedule a meeting for.

I'm still stuck on how to
- search for a continuous hour of free time
- search for something like "where 90% are free and what are the
appointments for the other 10% so that I could ask them to reschedule"

Daniel

[James Conrad St.John Foreman]

CREATE TABLE available_times (appointment_da te date, appointment_sta rt
time, appointment_end time);

Put into this table one row per date per 5/10/15 minute slice. (This
isn't going to be that big- at 5 minute slices you've got 105,120 rows
per year).

CREATE TABLE appointments (appointment date, appointment_sta rt time,
appointment_end time, <lots of keys to other tables depending on
structure>);

Then every appointment goes into appointments. To find free time, you
can do

CREATE VIEW free_times AS
SELECT appointment_dat e, appointment_sta rt, appointment_end
FROM available_times
EXCEPT
SELECT a.appointment_d ate, a.appointment_s tart, a.appointment_e nd
FROM available_times a, appointments b
WHERE a.appointment_d ate = b.appointment_d ate
AND a.appointment_s tart BETWEEN b.appointment_s tart AND
b.appointment_e nd
AND a.appointment_e nd BETWEEN b.appointment_s tart AND
b.appointment_e nd;

and then add conditions to free_times to get first appointment in
September, etc.

HTH

[Tonkuma]

Sorry, this was not tested. Only my idea.

CREATE TABLE Appointment
(id SMALLINT NOT NULL
,astart TIMESTAMP NOT NULL
,afinish TIMESTAMP NOT NULL
,person VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL
,telno VARCHAR(12) NOT NULL
)
SELECT b.afinish AS available_start
, TIME('00:00:00' ) + DEC(n.astart-b.afinish, 6,0) AS
available_durat ion
FROM Appointment b
, TABLE
(SELECT MIN(n.astart)
FROM Appointment n
WHERE n.astart > b.afinish
) n(astart)
WHERE TIME(:requested _duration) - TIME('00:00:00' ) >= (n.astart -
b.afinish)
-- * Find the first available appointment in September
-- AND MONTH(b.afinish ) = 9
-- AND MONTH(n.astart) = 9
--
-- * Find the first afternoon appointment
-- AND b.afinish >= TIMESTAMP(CURRE NT DATE, '12:00:00')
-- AND n.astart <= TIMESTAMP(CURRE NT DATE, '23:59:00')

[--CELKO--]

Create events for "open", "available for appointment", "not available
for anyone", etc. so that you have something for every time slot in the
work day. The events will be either scheduled or "schedule-able"; you
then have a routine carve out time slots within the "schedule-able".

[Brian Tkatch]

1) Will be used more for storing information or for reporting on it?
2) Do appointments only start once every x minutes, or can they start
at any time?
3) Can more than one person schedule an appointment for the same time?

B.

[pb648174]

I think you should stick with tracking the start and end dates only but
you will also need to track the available hours for appointments (M-F
9-5) so that you can do the subtraction and come up with the free time.

[Ed Prochak]

pb648174 wrote:

I think you should stick with tracking the start and end dates only but
you will also need to track the available hours for appointments (M-F
9-5) so that you can do the subtraction and come up with the free time.

I think I would use a start time and duration instead of start time and
end time. Then something like

table schedule
starttime timestamp
duration number (units of minutes?)
usedflag a code type (int or char)
location
description
....

free time are those rows with usedflag code indicating it's free.
Finding the first available free slot is something like

select min(starttime)
from schedule
where usedflag='free'
and duration >= :desired_durati on

or all slots on a given day

select starttime
from schedule
where usedflag='free'
and starttime between :given_day and :given_day+1day

I'm really surprised this wasn't suggested earlier.
Ed