Point in the right direction

Complicated search on DB

[macz_g]

I am hoping to be pointed in the right direction as to how to set up the following.....

I would like my visitors to be able to enter details such as duration of their trip and countries that they would like to visit. The results would pull articles out of the DB and arrange them in a logical order to be a travel plan.

Hoping this is possible and not to complicated.

[ramoneguru]

So here's what I get you want to do:
1. Get the duration of the trip (in hours/days most likely)

2. Get a list of ths cities they would like to attend

3. Print out a list of the best possible route to take in order to visit each location.....

Impossible? Nah, but a hell of a problem since you need to consider such things as:

Sleeping
Time zone changes (if any)
Eating
Travel speed (via train, taxi, air, etc...)
Length of each visit (how long do they plan to stay at each location)
This list can go on for awhile...

However, if you just wanted to find out the most logical route to take while visiting these sites, then just setup a few distances.

What I mean is calculate the distances from one location to another (this may take a few maps, a ruler, and some time). Hopefully they don't want to visit some town in the middle of nowhere.

1. Calculate a few distances and store those results in a DB (not sure what kind of structure you want, sorry).

2. Have the user enter the site they want to visit the most (that'll be your starting point or stop #1).

3. Find the shortest distance from the starting point(stop #1) to all the other selected locations they want to visit.

That shortest distance will be stop #2.

4. From stop #2 find the shortest distance to all the selected location they want to visit (except stop #1).

The shortest distance will be stop #3......

Eh, iono if that makes sense....I had to do a similar problem using Prolog once but, it was much easier for some reason.....Its pretty much the shortest path problem...

--Nick