I have encountered this problem before, and tackeled it with a number of different solutions. One of which (used coldfusion <-- yuck! and oracle) for a conference room booking system, the others used php and perl with postgres.

From my experience the examples out there are scarce and poor...but WCAL is a calendar system which may give you some insight into the logic behind this type of project.

A few tips from the experienced:

If at all possible use SQL! Whether it be mysql, postgres, oracle, miniSql, or even god forbid SqlServer. Using SQL will speed up you app (probably) and will positivly make the creation process much easier (if you know your basic SQL commands, select, insert, update, and delete)

For the "duration" portion of the app, use something like:



StartTimeStamp        06/19/2001 04:30:00
EndTimeStamp          06/19/2001 06:00:00
Duration(in minutes)  90
[download]


and a final tip is for the timestamps use the actual unix timestamp, and then manipulate that with Date::Calcand Date::Manip

Other than that dive in and go for it ... it truly wont be as bad as you might think.

HTH

- foogod