Hi everyone ! I hope everone is going alright

well, I need your Help !
I studied database fundamentals,website developing fundamentals, and system analysis 3 years ago but i have never done exersices.
To learn I decided to do a simple project in a professional way to learn from. I need your help from the begining till the end in each step. I need advices ,technical reviews from experts , monitoring my work. I hope I could learn alot from this project

My project is : online flight reservation. I assume it's for an airline.

I thought about it and collected the requirements and objectives and I hope they are complete if some requirments not mentioned and you see it's important please let me know.


Should i start with the requirements ? briefly , and they may not be consistent and clear :
1- user selects origin/ destination , date of travel, number of passengers ( adult/child/infant).
2-view the available flights
3- selects flights
4-get the fare/ taxes/rules of the ticket/total price
5-fill in the form of names/contact number/email.
6-reserve a seat / meal/ request special requirements like wheel chair.
7-credit card payment
8-get the tickets.
9-view bookings and check statues/ changes/ print tickets or receipts.

I may add the function of changing the dates of flights if it's simple after tickets issued. now it's optional.

Since i start from scratch and it's not for real airline, I have to develop the databse myself to run my project! I also have to add other functions for the administration and other staff just to start our project.

Control functions :
10- create flights and publish schedules. includes add destinations/ taxes/ timings etc..
11-edit flights ( change time / cancel )
Marketing functions:
12-publish fares ,rules,promotions.
13-edit fares and ticket rules
Admintration function:
14-create accounts to allow these functions
15-generate reports from the databse. Not yet specified

Hi everyone !

When I posted my thread , I thought I would get all the support I need but nobody replayed ..

maybe when because my thread has no quesion nobody replayed

anyway , i think the next step is to develop the database. I faced a difficulty !

You know each airline has many aircrafts model Airbus models , boeing models and each model is customized to have differenent cabin economy/business/first and each with different seat configuration. So when reserving the seat for passengers I need to specify whether it's front/back / asile / window seat etc..

I have not come with a good idea yet. any help regarding this problem ?

my idea is the let every different configuration cabin as an entity

I don't know how to do it .. any help please ?

THan you in AdvanCe

No need to handle credit cards , I guess it is just your project assignment , first come out with database design , what all tables you require and relation among them ,etc

Hi "itHelp"

Thank you for your help..

Payment is needed. all airline reservations needs credit card. and I have to keep the credit card in database for each booking so that we can use it later for changes , to know who is the card holder , to refund his money back to credit card..

okay... I will list all the tables and attributes later in a consistent way so that you can suggest the way to desing the database so that it'll be easy to reserve passengers seats.

Thank you

Hi !

Sorry for being late..

I was busy and had no time enough..

I really appreciate your time and effort.

I was trying to design my ERD. while i was designing it I eleciate many requiremnets and thought about database issues and I'm still confused !

Here is the initial design as a jpeg file. we should discuss it to come with a good database desing before mapping and normalization .. I'm not sure i'm right

http://i41.tinypic.com/2cql0uh.jpg



and here is some explanation of the database so that you judge and try to improve my design.

--------------------------------------------------
Each flight is operated by an aircraft.

A town may have more than one airport.

An agent makes a booking for one or more passengers.

Each booking should have an itinerary (one or more flights to get to destination). It has passengers' names , contact details , the total cost would be calculated and saved within the booking based on the ticket type ( class , fare basis ).

Booking should save the fare basis to know the rules and fares.

Taxes based on the airports would also be calculated and added to the fare of tickets to get the total cost.

Each passenger will be issued a ticket .tickets should have a unique ticket number , reference to the booking , passenger name , itinerary , fare basis , taxes and fare amount , total price mentioned.

A passenger may also request special services, special meal, a desired seat.
--------------------------------------------------

I put an X on two relationships ( governs). I think I don't need them since we can find the farebasis associated with ticket or booking by searching fare basis table by keys already kept in ticket or booking.

I also omit the relationship between ticket and airports. i thought relating them makes no use other than refrential integrity!


Sorry for writing much.. I really appreciate your help.

Hi,
Maybe I got here a little late, but still I think I can help.
First of all why don't try to describe main functions of the system in an informal way - say, simple English. Then try to find out which ones are absolutely necessary and give them a highest rank. Going further describe the second highest services your system must offer and so on. You'll finish with a simple plan of what to do. This is extremely important!
Then try to constraint every piece you should develop in a time interval of the same length, say a week. Then just start, learn as you go, this is very important. Don't just learn, go and learn. When you feel confused and lost look at your plan. Don't hesitate to change it - it is not carved on stone after all. You made it, you made the mistakes in it. You knew less in the beginning.
I can tell you many more but time is limiting me.
Wish you luck!

I'll work with you on the project - if you'll help me with mine.