Jinn

I just got some contract work progamming a little app for an HR department. As a third-year CS major I'm good, but not great. They want a program that will allow them to (a) create student profiles with name/address/phone/class schedule, (b) track who's working in what room, (c) be able to schedule vacation time for students and still have the rooms automatically assign new sudents, (d) print out schedules for the students and for the rooms, (e) and ideally assign the empty rooms to people with preferences for certain ones.

OK -- background aside; would I get much performance/ease of programming out of using a relational database? Every "assignment" program I've ever written was relatively simple and used a flat-file, so I've got no experience with relational databases beyond CREATE and DROP. Their budget wouldnt afford something like MS SQL, so I'd have to learn AND use mySQL in the two-ish weeks they've given me. There's about 10 rooms and an active payroll around 30-40 students...

So -- would you use a flat file database or a relational databse in my situation?

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