Case study: holiday lettings database Part 1
Many people let a few or a couple of holiday homes. This is a problem because while it doesn't justify the purchase of one of the larger more expensive systems for managing lettings it still needs a fair amount of administration.
Also the owners like to add a personal and individual touch, providing local free range produce, catering for additional requirements, including extra beds, bedding and a breakfast pack for the first morning.
Obviously this needs a fair amount of organisation and a lot of information which has to be stored somewhere. Often it can be scattered in a number of places. In emails, spreadsheets, diaries, calendars, some on the internet, some on the kitchen wall.
Bringing all this information together so that is it there when it's wanted is the kind of problem easily solved with a database. However this is only half the story and illustrates something very important. Why was the information stored in so many different places and ways? The reason is obvious when you think of it though not perhaps so easy to put into words. The thing is if you want to add up your costs you need a spreadsheet. If you need to see when your flat is vacant and when people are coming you need a calendar, and so on. The information is stored in ways that are related to the tasks you need it for.
Just putting data in a database is not very helpful. You need to be able to do all the things you need to do with it. This where the 'user-interface' comes in. The user-interface has to be task orientated so that the person using it can do the things they need to do.
To illustrate what I mean by task orientated I have added a few screen shots of the lettings database.
The first picture shows the page where the tariff and the available dates for the coming season can be set. If the tariff is entered first then the system can 'work out' available dates from the tariff. These are shown on the calendar so you can adjust the calendar if necessary.
The second screenshot shows a use of this information later - not only does the calendar show which days are available and which are booked but also if you click on an available day it will show you the tariff at that point.
The final illustration shows how much the database user-interface is task orientated. It is a list of pages or sections and notice that they are nearly all to do with the kind of jobs which have to be done, rather than just the data itself.