How do I start writing a party booking program?

[crazymidget01]

I had offered to try and write a program for my job. This program needs to handle booking of parties, creating and adjusting customer accounts, printing invoices, party schedules and mailing lists, and a few other features. This project is a little ambitious, but I would like to give it a shot. I haven't started coding yet. I am just trying to think of how I would arrange classes, flow, and GUI of this program. I wanted to see if anyone has any experience and/or suggestions in writing this type of program.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Joe

[stultuske]

well, start off with the analysis. when you're done with that, check it, to decide what objects you need, and what functionalities these objects must provide. make sure you also know the dependencies between the objects: do you need to inherit objects, do you need to use interfaces somewhere, ... ?

also, check what techniques you'll be using: is it a desktop application, is it a web-application, will you need to be able to work on the application with the same db with several clients at the same time, does it run completely locally or over a network, ...

if you're working alone on this project, I would suggest to leave the GUI for later, first create the elements that form the backbone of your application. it may look like your progress is slow in the start, but it will help you go faster later on.

IMHO, this doesn't look very difficult nor ambitious, it kind of reminds me of the tasks we were told to do in college, so I think you should be able to complete this without too much trouble. did you just started this job, if so, this may be your employers way to test whether or not you actually can create a basic application. also, have you been given a deadline? you must always consider the time you have left to complete the application when deciding how to approach solving it.

[crazymidget01]

Thanks for your response stultuske. There is no real deadline, sooner the better I guess. The company is doing everything manually and cannot afford a full fledged POS system right now, so I offered to try and put something together using my programming knowledge. It isn't necessary for it to be a network application, so I guess for simplicity a local application would be best. I assume I would need and object for each party package, customer, invoice, etc. In order to save customer information, should be saved to file? or should I look into database? Could be a lengthy file, what is more efficient? I am just unsure where exactly to start.

[stultuske]

do you have any experience in writing applications?
create an analysis in plain english
the nouns you get, will be much the same as your objects. the verbs will be the functionalities/methods.
I would suggest using a database.