Movie Ticket Booking System ERD (With Database Structure)

Last Updated: November 10, 2023

Welcome to a sharing of an ERD of a movie booking system. So you are planning to build a system for a movie theater? Or maybe you are just stuck with this as a school project? Well, here’s a sharing of my “simple version”, hope it helps to speed up your design process. Read on!

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

ER DIAGRAM

First, here is the entire ER diagram and a quick overview of the system.

 

MOVIE BOOKING SYSTEM ERD

Movie Booking System ERD (click to enlarge)

To keep things simple, I have grouped this system into 4 sections.

  • Users – The administrator, staff, and customers.
  • Cinemas – Cinemas, theaters, seats.
  • Movies – Captain Obvious at your service.
  • Shows & Booking – Available screening times and booking.

 

FOR REFERENCE ONLY

I can hear the “master system builders” go – “This diagram is inaccurate”, “this is stupid”, and “this is too simple”. By all means, this is only a reference.

  • Movies can have zero or many shows – Yes, movies can get canceled. If they HAVE to be screened at least once, go ahead and change this on your own.
  • Movie theaters have multiple seats. If you have “special seatless theaters”, go ahead and change this on your own.
  • If you are running outdoor movie theaters, go ahead and change the entire cinema/theater/seats section to your own – Maybe to just “theater and parking lots”.
  • If you want to track monetary transactions, go ahead and add more tables/entities on your own.

The list can go on, but the point here is – You are creating your own system, you have to define your own rules.

 

 

TABLE STRUCTURE

Now that we are done with the overview, let us get into more details on the entities or tables.

 

PART 1) USERS

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
user_id INTEGER Primary key.
user_role VARCHAR Up to you to decide – “A”dmin, “S”taff, “C”ustomer.
user_name VARCHAR The user’s full name.
user_email VARCHAR The user’s email. Unique to prevent duplicates.
user_password VARCHAR The user’s password.

Some beginners like to create multiple “user tables” – Customers, Staff, Managers, and Administrators. No idea why. If all of them share the same dataset, why not just create a single “users table with role field”?

 

PART 2) MOVIES

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
movie_id INTEGER Primary key.
movie_name VARCHAR Name of the movie.
movie_language VARCHAR The spoken language of the movie.
movie_subtitles VARCHAR Available subtitles.
movie_rating VARCHAR Not “number of stars”. “G”, “PG”, “NC16”, “M18”, “RA”, etc…

Adding some information such as “synopsis” and “poster” may make sense for an online portal, but don’t go crazy otherwise. We are not building a movie database here – “Producer”, “studio”, “actors”, and “review” probably won’t make much sense.

 

 

PART 3) BRICKS & MOTAR

3A) CINEMAS

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
cinema_id INTEGER Primary key.
cinema_name VARCHAR Name of the cinema.
cinema_address VARCHAR Street address.
cinema_tel VARCHAR Telephone number.
cinema_email VARCHAR Email address.

At the “top level”, we have the cinema itself – Which is the entire building.

 

3B) THEATERS

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
theater_id INTEGER Primary key.
cinema_id INTEGER Foreign key.
theater_name VARCHAR Name of the theater. Can be anything, maybe just numbers or even funky names – “T1, T2, T3, JUAN, DOS, TRES”

Next, a cinema can have multiple theaters. I know, this may not be the case. But it’s always better to future-proof systems and keep this.

 

 

3C) SEATS

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
seat_id VARCHAR Primary key.
theater_id INTEGER Primary and foreign key.
seat_type VARCHAR Up to you to decide – Single, King, Double, Gold, etc…

Finally, the seats of the theater. Take extra note – The seat ID is a VARCHAR, it can be a seat number such as “A1, B2, C3”. Things can get very complicated with the seat layout, I will leave it out of this simple ERD – It can be an entire sub-system on its own.

 

PART 4) SHOWS & BOOKING

4A) SHOWS

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
show_id INTEGER Primary key.
movie_id INTEGER Foreign key. Which movie is playing.
theater_id INTEGER Foreign key. At which theater.
show_time DATE TIME At what time.

Which movie is playing at which theater, and at what time?

4B) BOOKING

COLUMN DATA TYPE NOTES
show_id INTEGER Primary and foreign key.
user_id INTEGER Primary and foreign key.
seat_id INTEGER Primary and foreign key.

Which user (customer and possibly in-house staff) booked which movie, theater, and seat?

 

 

EXTRA

That’s all for the tutorial, and here is a small section on some extras and links that may be useful to you.

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

 

THE END

Thank you for reading, and we have come to the end. I hope that it has helped you to better understand, and if you want to share anything with this guide, please feel free to comment below. Good luck and happy coding!