Is MySQL / PHP a good choice for this..?

[eXtremist]

I work in the Audio/Visual centre at the university I attend, and my supervisor and I were having a discussion about keeping our booking records in some sort of database. Currently we are using a very inefficient system of cards and a slot-board.

I put forth the idea of having a web interface that both the students and instructors could use to book A/V equipment without really knowing the limitations of such a system. He thought it was a good idea. My question for you guys is: how difficult would such a system be to implement using MySQL / PHP?

The system would need to consist of a master database of equipment available for bookings.. This would include TV/VCRs, LCD data projectors, video cameras, slide projectors, etc.

The booker would use the web interface to enter a booking for whatever type of equipment with information such as DATE, TIME, and LOCATION. The database would then be checked to see if such equipment is available at that time, and if it is, set up a booking.

Of course, if there are only 5 TVs in total, and 5 are booked for a certian time, then when someone tried to book a TV for the same time, it would tell him there are none available.

We would also like to be able to extract information from the database. For instance, at the end of each semester we would like to count the bookings for each type of equipment and create a report.

This is only a rough sketch of the requirements of such a system, but I want some opinions on the difficulty level of implementing it. I'm pretty sure it can be done (correct me if I'm wrong) but is there any other way to do the job easier?

Would such a system (MySQL/PHP) have any limitations that I should know about?

I'm not looking for any technical answers here, just a general opinion on my situation.

Thanks in advance...
--Greg

[Lorithar]

*hrrms*

Duration of booking.

PHP can handle that sort of thing for you quite well, however, if you aren't sure, check the web ..I'm almost sure I saw a meeting room manager php set somewhere ... (winces ...don't recall where) but it would apply in this case ... I prowled it because it had a security level set (certain users could access without logon to inquire, others logged on to book, others logged on to manage the package, others had logons that allowed them to manage the database ... ) and the backend was mysql.