This article tackles a logical problem and demonstrates a technique that is useful in other “date-time” scheduling or equipment tracking situations.

The logical problem it attempts to solve is, “How do you keep track of things when they are not being used?” It is fairly easy to enter when things are used, but in many situations it is also useful to have an entry for when they are not. This is especially true if you want to later build calculations to analyze the usage of large numbers of entries, percentages, etc..

It does, however, bend one of the basic common sense rules of database construction, so it should be used only when necessary. That rule is to not create a structure where records are going to be primarily empty. A bunch of empty records is a waste of disk space, at the very least. In this case, however, only a small percentage would be empty, and their usefulness outweighs the wastage (IMHO).

There are a couple of techniques with portals. The sections are related, but independent, so “take what you need and leave the rest,” as a wise man once said.

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I have travelled to Italy on five previous occasions. For a variety of reasons, I never visited the extreme south known as the Mezzogiorno. This region includes the Italian provinces of Puglia (the heel), Basilicata (the instep), Calabria (the toe), and Sicily (the football like island about to be kicked by the mainland boot). For the sixth visit, I determined to rectify this. Here is a synopsis of my thoughts and observations: a kind of travel diary with attitude.

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