3 dimensions

BRM is a big database of your bikes & reservations

So it is all about showing you which bits of data you want to see.  Not all your data, just the right amount to allow you to complete whatever task you're doing right now.

There are essentially 3 dimensions:

• bikes
• dates
• reservations

3 dimensions in your database

For example, take a look at this view.  User selected:

• bikes: "stepthrough hybrid"
• dates: this week

and the result:

• system return the reservations

tell us which bikes and which dates and we'll fetch your reservations

In other words user supplied 2 dimensions (bikes & dates) and the system fetched the 3rd (reservations):

Let's look at another example

Show me "reservations for this week"

We go to the reservations view.

We hit the 'this week' quick search.

We get the results; reservations for this week.

In other words, the user supplied 1 dimension (dates) and the system fetched the other 2 dimensions (reservations, and thereby bikes)

Final example

A more complex search.  What we call an indirect search.  (search for reservations with a particular attribute)

"show me recently created (new) reservations"

Here we go to the database and find reservations which happen to have the attribute of 'created date' < 5 days*

Here is what the results might look like:

In other words, the user supplied 1 dimension, but indirectly ('new reservations') and the system fetched all 3 dimensions (reservations, bikes and dates)

We worked out which were the new reservations.

From that we derived the date range, which in this case happened to span 51 days (ie when the first one started and when the last one ended)

* and of course you can change the definition of what you mean by 'new'

See Also

First relevant article

Second relevant article

Third relevant article