registration apps

I work as an in-house php programmer for my university. Most of the work that comes to me is requests for systems where users can register for events that administrators create, then there is inevitably a large amount of reporting for the administrators.

I usually re-use much of my code for authentication, but usually the types of events from project to project are so different that I can't re-use any of the rest. I was thinking about creating an abstraction of this type of system, perhaps object oriented. Any suggestions? Here is what I have so far:

-Classes for people and events, either serialized into the database (cheating) or filling member data explicitly with selects in the constructor (gives me a warm feeling).

-Generalized mechanism for reporting, almost like a dumbed-down SQL. My user base is assumed to be nearly computer-illiterate. Something like "show all events where there are more than 30 people attending".

I'm still working on how to store and account for differences in the projects, and how to pitch it to my boss ;)

Thanks for any input.

-Ted

instead of writing a new SQL, try this approach, it might be less complicated:

if your table has like 10 fields, but it only makes sense to search/filter by 5 of them, you create something like a "configuration" script, that will select which 5 fields are searchable, and in what way (what "type" they are)/

one may be a date/time field, so you would let users specify start and/or end date (via some fancy dhtml calendar).

other might be a number fields, so again, user will be able to specify a number, min/max, or something else..

third might be just a simple searchable string, but fourth can be a category, where user will be able to select one of the categories..

etc, i think you get the picture..

you would build a universal search, and for every new project, you would just specify a configuration of sort:

name:string:free-style-search
date:date:date-calendar
age:int:min-max
...

and your script would build a search form from that configuration..