Going from webscripting to server-client software.

[Stephen]

Up to now all of my experience with Python programming is for the
World Wide Web either Python CGI or Zope. Now I am developing 
some software where the client is no longer a web browser and I 
find it's a much harder proposition. 

The application is a booking system for a sports centre. There are
8 people who will use the software to check if a sports hall or 
squash court is in use or reserved.  I did this first with an 
intranet and it was really easy. But it was possible for one of the
staff to be looking at a resource (eg. a squash court) and not
be aware of a booking made by another member of staff in real time,
which could lead to double-bookings if telephone bookings are made. 
They do not like to hit refresh in order to see the most up to date
status of a particular resource. They want software more like 
Windows-applications. 

How should I keep all of the client applications in synchronization
with each other?  When each client app is opened, it gets all the 
bookings for the day from the server.  If the user wishes to display
another day, it requests all bookings for that date. However, if 
one client makes a booking or edits data, how should it update all
other client apps?  Should it send the data back to the server and
then each client request any changes each and every second ? Or
should the clients communicate between themselves ? This latter idea
does not sound very scalable. 

I know there's lots to learn here and would prefer to go read up
rather than trouble you so any helpful resources will see me on my way.
Should I be looking at SOAP/.Net or Visual Basic or Java/CORBA instead
or is Python up to it?  What other caveats are there ?
I'm sure somebody must of created something like this already for 
resource management.

Regards,

Stephen.