>I'm looking for a source for data models or examples of a well designed hotel-type reservation system. I've looked on the Web, done MSDN searches, bought both volumes of "Data Model Reference Book" by Silverston. In none of these resources can I find one good example of hotel-type reservations. What I need to know is: what is the best way to normalize the relations between a guest, a room, and the reserved dates? Should there be one record per guest per room per day? Or should it be one record per guest per room and range of dates?
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>I hate to reinvent the wheel (starting with a block of stone) when I know that the world is full of these systems.
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>Does anyone have any good ideas on where I can look for this information?
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>Thanks, Jim

To see if anyone's done an XML schema, you could try www.XML.org (as well as several other places -- there's a recent thread on this).

It's an interesting question. Relational design works best with discrete rather than continuous quantities, it seems.

OTTOMH, I'd do the following:

Use discrete records for each day of a guest's stay.

Include a field for the first day of that range.

That makes the following simple:

1. Finding out if a room is occupied on a specific day.

2. Identifying easily a multi-day stay. (Otherwise, if a guest has more than one stay, it's difficult to sort out a day within a range/multiple stays).

Jay