Should I use MySQL?

[OUT_FOX_EM]

I think I have a basic idea of what I want to do here but I'm always open to better or different suggestions that anyone may have.

Basically the site is going to be for vacation rentals, and I would obviously need a calendar to reflect which days are vacant. The idea would be for someone to make a reservation, go through the checkout/charge/confirmation process, and upon approval from their credit card those dates would no longer be available for reservation on the calendar.

What would be the easiest way to have those dates blocked out and how would I integrate that with the merchant account/credit card side of things? I'm assuming I would want the calendar to look to the database for reserved dates but I'm not 100% sure on how I would use the credit card approval to create reservation entries in the database.

Thanks for any ideas you may have.

[bastien]

if you are in the early stages of design and have not coded much, have a look at mamboserver.... its a cms system that can simply incorprate a ton of what you want to do...maybe that can make it fly quicker

[OUT_FOX_EM]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I do actually have some experience with coding but not with processing credit cards. I don't know what happens when an approval is given and how I can use that to make an entry in the database.

[bastien]

Most times a third party processes the transactions and all you get back is either a fail or a confirmation number. You would use that to trigger the rest of the checkout payment process