Expert: Scottgem - 1/26/2005

Question
Hi.

I'm busy with a course scheduling database.  I need to schedule courses in a particular room which have a startdate, starttime, enddate and endtime.

I want to create a macro or something that informs the user when they have scheduled a course in the same room at the same time.  It doesn't matter if the course is the same.

THANKS!

Answer
A scheduling application is often the most difficult to design. Doing what you want depends greatly on your structure. Without knowing that structure its hard to be able to help.

I can tell you that I would envision at least three tables here. A rooms table, a schedule table and a course table. The Schedule table would look like this:

ScheduleID (Primary key Autonumber)
RoomID (Foreign key)
CourseID (FK)
Start
End (or duration)

I would prefer to use duration then an end time. I think it would make it easier to check for conflicts.

With a structure like that you could create a query that lists any schedule items where the start falls within a currently scheduled item.

HTH
Scott<>