Database plan

Below is the current simple representation of the planned schema for the TucsonEventFinder

A couple of things require some extra explanation: the hours_map field in the event_occurrences table and the service_flag field in the venues table are planned to be a bitmask or bitmap represented as integers. For example the service_flag will refer to an array of 5 elements that indicate whether the venue serves beer, coffee, food, liquor, wine; the element will take 0 for no and 1 for yes. The actual number stored will be the decimal integer that corresponds to this binary representation. Similarly hours_map will refer to an array of 48 elements that represent every half hour period during a day, with 0 meaning the venue is closed and 1 meaning the venue is open. So with just 5 bits the integer stored will vary between 0 and 31, and with 48 bit it will vary between 0 and 281474976710655. An hours_map type field is also what is stored for each day of the week in the hours table.

The flow chart below gives an idea of how the database will be filled on a weekly basis