Jay,
hey there! thanks again for your help. after re-reading your earlier post where you laid out the tables-- i want to be sure that we're "on the same page" here because i get the strong feeling that you have made an excellent set of tables for a completely different kind of bus system than what i'm dealing with here
mine is an "around downtown" trip planner, not a trip planner for Greyhound type bus. so, i wont be dealing with "max passengers"-- and i don't need to assign busses to routes-- because at the touch of a button, the driver can change the variable message sign on the front (and back) of the bus-- IN FACT, some of the buses actually become another route at the end of one of their route trips
imagine a clock face for this illustration-- w/ a RED line and a Blue line, one inside of the other, but basically the same radius (to represent left lane north-bound, and right lane south-bound-- of course, then it couldn't be a circle... but you get the idea, i hope).
the red lane, starting at 9 o' clock starts north-bound heading toward 12 o' clock, and the blue lane, also at 9 o' clock starts south bound toward 6 o' clock. they each arrive at 3 o' clock simultaneously. at this point, instead of each bus doing a 180 degree turn, they each flip their signs. so the red lane is now the blue line, and vice versa. same physical bus, different route description. this way, between 9 , 6 and 3 o' clock on the on the clockface (not in time), it's ALWAYS the blue-line. at the bus-stop at 6 o' clock on the clockface, i can stand on the left side of the road and catch a "blue route" going in either direction, depending on if i need to get to 3 o' clock, or 9 o' clock-- this way, there are more options for the riders. wow-- that's really a weird system, isn't it?!? but, that's what i'm dealing w/ here-- basically-- except imagine the routes also take different streets on both n and s bound trips and all kinds of crazy shit to hit every place in town. sorry for all this crazyness, but i felt i needed to try to explain it at this point.
okay-- now that i have that squared away... heehee...
since our last conversation here, i settled on 3 tables for each route:
1 - bus-stop ID - for linking other tables together as a primary foreign key, both intra-route, and extra-route for the other bus routes' 3 tables
2 - bus-route timetable - for showing at what time of day this bus-route is at which bus-stop
3 - bus-stop details - for compiling detailed data about each bus-stop
i believe that in this manner, i should be able to get everything i need in terms of queries and linking-- but then again, i haven't tried to do anything extremely complex yet, nor have i tried querying route-x against route-y simultaneously for special searches -- which will be the whole point of the "trip planner", really i guess. ;)
but, i don't have any data duped in any table-- and, until i think of something to add for a better, more precise "trip planner", i think i have all of my necessary bits of data, each in its own unique field now. table 1 (the id table) of course is duping info which is in both table 2 and 3, but that's the whole point there really, right?
please view the screen captures i made for you here:
http://adesigninteractive.com/fileshare/mysql/
actually-- if you check my most recent posts, you'll probably see that i've moved beyond this table stuff-- for now at least-- (not to say that there isn't always room for improvement!), AND i've also taken a little break from it so there's not a whole heck of a lot more here-- but, coincidentally-- i'm goign to start on it again here directly (like in the next 5 mins!) ;)
so, do please keep an eye out for me as i'm probably going to be back here real soon.
off of the top of my head-- if you're out there-- since my next challenge/ attempt is going to be to get this app to actually try to "Plan a Trip", i'm trying to think of which pieces of data i can compare mathematically so that my equation will evaluate to an output of telling the Trip Planner user when to go to the bus-stop closest his starting point, and it should at the same time indicate at what time the bus will arrive at the selected destination. like i said, i haven't started the html / php for this part yet-- but i have some ideas. anything you feel like throwing my way in terms of that part i would be MOST grateful. thanks!
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