So, dates. I mean, dates. Right? Stupid Earth doesn't have the decency to revolve and rotate in 10s. And be flat.

I'm starting a little (real world) job dispatch + scheduling app with Catalyst; like many others (locations, users, times, frequencies, free/busy slots for locations and users). My question is probative, data design phase. I do not believe there is anything quite like what I'm doing but I'd love to hear if there is freeware out there to do job dispatching (again this is for the real world; taxi driver, copier repairman, plumber kind of thing where you have to send an agent to a location on an arbitrarily complex schedule).

Scheduled dates (duration, frequency, coincidence like busy/free) are decidedly non-trivial. I'm considering using iCal formats in DB fields. The problem being, the relational aspect just went out the window; you have to read in all possibly related records, vivify them as some kind of iCal object, and then check for conflicts, availability, repetition... So, this strikes me as bad idea but an even worse one is trying to reinvent a date duration/frequency syntax.

Thinking out loud and would appreciate same; any input, guidance, horror stories. I will open source the project if I can write it well enough (clean code + generalizing it well).

In reply to Scheduling/dates design -- iCal + RMDBS? Or...? by Your Mother

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