I could really use your help with it(making reservations to hotels etc)

I need some help with making reservations to a hotel. I have the following information in the database: (1) hotel name (2) room type (3) number of places within some days (4) the first date (5) the last second date The first and the last date represent the time for which the travel agency has made their reservations to some hotel and the number represents the number of rooms reserved for this period of time. That was now the back-end stuff... Now, when customer comes to their website, he/she chooses a hotel, room type and then he also types in the dates, when he would like to stay there (I have dropdowns for that). OK, that was the story. What I would like to know is, what would be the best way to get to know if there will be free rooms. The travelling agency has made different reservations in hotels usually for 1-2 days,eg: Time period: 24.01.2001 - 26.01.2001 Number of rooms: 10 Time period 26.01.2001 - 27.01.2001 Number of rooms: 3 Lets imagine that now comes the customer, types in the time period 25.01.2001 - 27.01.2001, it covers one one period fully and another only partly. damn...sorry, I even don`t know what I need from you exactly, I guess I`d like to know -->how could I check if there was free rooms for the full period of time that the customer has entered AND -->how to write to the database, that one room from that period and one room from half of the other period has been reserved? I don`t know, maybe it seems simple, but...by now my brain is dead. If someone could help me, I would really appreciate it, maybe if someone has done some site for some travelling agency himself, you could get in touch and explain this thing a bit. braindead... Siim Einfeldt itpunk@itpunk.com