APPLICATION SOFTWARE FOR GRAPHICAL INTERFACE ONLINE THEATRE BOOKING SYSTEM
Abstract - This paper examines the booking
requirements of theatres, as well as the type of
information required by their managers, and
incorporates some of the desirable features within. A
database has been designed to cater for a 99 seats
theatre with a maximum of two performances per day.
In order to keep costs to a minimum it makes use of a
PC which is practically standard office equipment. The
purpose of this research is to create a location-aware
service for internet users. This service is called Theatre
Booking System which allows users to search for movies
in a given range from their current position, or
reserve/purchase tickets. Users can pay for tickets using
credit cards saved in a secure wallet embedded into the
application, or e-money received as refund for the
cancelled tickets. A user-centered design is considered.
Workshops and interviews are conducted with real
users to build and evaluate different low and highfidelity
prototypes. Internet is used as a network carrier
for all client-server requests. PHP, MYSQL, HTML and
JAVA-SCRIPT are chosen as implementation
technologies.
KEYWORDS - Theatre booking, Cinema booking,
Computer reservation system, Graphical interface, Userfriendly,
Web-based
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Theatre booking system aims at educating and
enlightening theatre patrons on how to make bookings and
reservation for theatres and to minimize the hassle of
travelling down to the theatre location before making
reservations and queuing up for tickets to avoid
congestions. This involves making the customer aware of
seat reservation schemes. Theatre booking system achieves
this using theatre booking software, which will contain
various events that result into a graphical interface booking
system which even special people can make reservations.
This paper makes it easy to make reservations for users to
watch a movie at will anytime they want and anywhere they
choose as long as they are connected to the Internet instead
of travelling down to the booking center and this is time
wasting. In addition, to make theatre patrons learn and
understand the importance theatre. Being an online booking
system, it will assist managers and administrators to update
movie information that can be accessed by patrons, help
confirm reservations and educate the patrons on how to
book cinema ticket, and seat reservation online in such a
way that the congestion involved would be reduced. Online
theatre booking system is needed in order to run a check on
the authenticity of the tickets to avoid fraud manipulated
booking. In sum, it educates patrons and provides a userfriendly
interface which is easy to understand and navigate
by both experienced and novice users. This study would be
useful to local and international theatres and cinemas
houses who are interested in automating and simplifying
their operations by adopting the use of this system to boost
their level of productivity. With a user-friendly
environment, online booking will be a lot easier for users
that decide to make theatre reservation from the comfort of
their homes, offices and in any place ensuring a safe and
secure user authentication process.
2.0 OVERVIEW EXISTING SYSTEM
The history of booking system started in the early days
of American commercial aviation, passengers were
relatively few, and each airline's routes and fares were
tightly regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board. These
were published in a volume entitled “The Official Airline
Guide”, from which travel agents or consumers could
construct an itinerary, then call or telex airline staff, who
would mark the reservation on a card and file it (Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2000). As demand for air travel
increased and schedules grew more complex, this process
became impractical. After the discovery of a booking
system, it was then incorporated into theatre. The existing
system involves a manual booking system where the box
office treasurer would have a paper plan of the theatre for
each performance, with a corresponding ticket book. The
patron would have access to a diagram of the theatre to
indicate preferred seats, but usually not be allowed to
actually see the treasurer’s plan, as part of the treasurer’s
job is to distribute the audience around the theatre for both
increased comfort (not all patrons in the same corner while
many other seats are vacant), and to give the impression of
a well-attended performance (even if the theatre was not
full) for publicity reasons. In the process, the treasurer
would attempt to sell the premium (and most expensive)
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seats first. Booking a seat and buying a ticket in this manner
would be a face to face negotiation between the patron and
treasurer. The treasurer was also expected to be
knowledgeable about the performance in question, so that
patron questions could be dealt with in a positive manner
(Sweeting 1969). The patron would finally pay for the
agreed seats, and receive tickets printed with the respective
seat numbers. The treasurer would have to carefully mark
off the seats on the theatre seating plan for every ticket sold,
to avoid the possibility of the same seat being sold twice by
mistake. This process is strenuous because a patron would
have to queue up for hours; this in turn is not comfortable
for patrons because it is stressful. Therefore, this is where
the need for a theatre booking system comes in especially
an online application to combat this. The existing system
lacks an online booking system access.
There are currently a number of different websites
offering online tickets sales. Some of the most well known
are:
• Ticket Master (ticketmaster.co.uk)
Figure 2.1
• Aloud (aloud.com)
Figure 2.2
Each site of the site offers a very similar service to their
customers. The sites each have a different way of
navigating and searching the site.
Ticket master and Aloud as shown in Figure 2.1 and
Figure 2.2 include links on their home page to what they
describe as ‘hot tickets’ linking to pages selling latest
tickets. The search facilities available on each of the sites
are similar.
The Ticket master website offers accounts to customers
so that their details are stored so that process of purchasing
tickets is quicker and customers do not have to fill in forms.
Customers who have accounts receive emails periodically
from the site promoting upcoming events. The search on
Ticket Master allows users to search by artist, team or
venue in a chosen location.
The Aloud website has a basic search comprising of
artist/band or town. The advanced search allows users to
search by artist or event, a set of dates, a venue name and a
town. The aloud website offers customers an email list
facility where users can enter their email address to be kept
up to date with upcoming events.
These two websites has its homepage clumsy and views
and only playwright movies and drama are shown. While in
the proposed the system, due to the incessant increase for
knowledge giving rise to upgrade in technology, film shows
is incorporated to make it a movie based online reservation
of tickets for both theatres and cinemas
Figure 2.1 A screen shot of TicketMaster website
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Figure 2.2 A screen shot of Aloud website
2.1 RELATED WORK
The theatre provides infrastructure and facilities for a
performance to take place, while allowing an audience to
enjoy this for a fee. A booking system is used to ensure
patrons can purchase tickets for a given performance well in
advance, and avoid being turned away at the last minute.
There are a couple of related works carried out by
(Pejakovic Derek, 2006) this is a dissertation on Theatre
Booking System review the existing system form the origin
of theatre from the Greeks to the renaissance and
reformation. (Mark Bradley 2006). Also wrote a
dissertation on Online Ticket Sales System:
Figure2.3 A screen shot of Mark Bradley’s work
2.2 OVERVIEW OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
The inception of the computer age witnessed a major
recognition of the efficiency of computer reservation
system. Airlines recognized the efficiency a computer
reservation system would bring to their operations. With
costs being prohibitive to all but the largest of companies,
the airline industry discarded their manual booking systems
in favour of permanently utilizing the electronic systems.
Several decades later, computers are affordable to even the
smallest of businesses, allowing them to enjoy the benefits
of enhanced productivity using Information Technology
(IT). Major theatres have set up computer booking systems
to increase their efficiency, but smaller operations might be
hampered to follow suit due to budgetary constraints. This
research investigated the construction of a computer-based
Theatre Booking System appropriate to the niche theatre
business. The completed system aims to enable it to be
utilized by patrons willing to book theatre seats online in
addition to theatre managers wanting to obtain various real
time ticket sale reports.. A discussion of traditional and
more modern booking systems is presented, with a proposal
to make use of IT to design a system which is fast,
convenient, informative, accurate and consistent with the
modern day conveniences consumers have come to expect.
The various components of the system will be tested and
evaluated for efficiency, accuracy, convenience, flexibility
and possible future developments.
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Booking Systems can also be called Computer
Reservation Systems (CRS). Computer Reservations
System (CRS) is a computerized system used to store,
process and retrieve information. Originally designed and
operated by airlines, these were later extended for the use of
travel agencies; major CRS operations that book and sell
tickets for multiple airlines are known as Global
Distribution Systems (GDS) (David E. Boundy, 1991).
Airlines have divested most of their direct holdings to
dedicated GDS companies, who make their systems
accessible to consumers through Internet gateways. The
appropriate use of computer can reduce the time taken to
accomplish these duties, as well as reduce the labour cost,
rendering the theatre more competitive. To prevent theatre
sales from dwindling, booking seats and paying for tickets
should be made as simple and convenient as possible.
Numerous enterprises provide customers with the
possibility of purchasing their goods and services online.
Since consumers have come to expect such facilities,
providing an online booking service can only serve to boost
performance attendance.
3.0 METHODOLOGY
The methodology used throughout the development
process is a variation on the waterfall life cycle. As the
requirements for the paper are unlikely to change, this
methodology befits the project. If the project requirements
are dynamic, often a more agile methodology would have
been chosen. The waterfall lifecycle works by following a
strict path through the development process not moving on
to the next stage until the previous stage has been
completed.
The theatre booking system is an ease of use software
with all the necessary capabilities for the clients. The
algorithm for the software is listed below:
1. From the home page, there are a number of links
from which the patron can perform different functions
depending on the client’s assigned privileges. The main
links are Home, All movies, Search and Admin
2. On the home page, the patron sees the movies and
their time schedule. The patron can click on the movie he
or she wants and he or she will automatically be redirected
to the booking page.
 Booking page: From this page, the patron
can book for any movie of his or her choice and a
code is generated when booking is successful.
3. To search and book for a movie, the patron can click
on the search page link and type the name of the desired movie.
4. To login as an administrator, click on the admin link
which takes you to the admin page, login with your details.
If access is granted, then you can proceed. But if access is
denied, the administrator will be referred back to the home
page.
3.1 COMPONENT AND SYSTEM TESTING
This deals with the verification of the efficacy of the
software to be sure of the performance of the expected
functions. It also involves performing a progressive overall
testing of the system’s objective.
3.1.1 DATABASE TESTING
In testing the database, ensure the database captures the
specified fields according to their respective attributes.
Also, ensure that the storage and retrieval functions of the
database functions properly. Hence, the database
connection with the interface worked perfectly. The tables
with information concerning the various aspects of the
software were rightly placed and are easily accessible by
the system administrator.
3.1.2 PROCESS TESTING
In this phase, the system was started and it ensured that
it was working perfectly well by logging in with an invalid
account details and access was denied and thereafter,
logging in with valid account details and access was granted
which meant that the system only recognizes registered
account details. Also, other features like creating a movie,
creating new user (administrator), deleting a movie,
withdrawing a movie, restoring a movie and managing
tickets were tested.
3.1.3 INTERFACE TESTING
The interface of this system ensures that the prescribed
format was used to create new user and that information
generated from the database were placed in their various
positions intended. This has helped in the input and output
design. The interface was properly tested to ensure that it
queried the database at any given time and it only fetched
information required for any particular page.