NYCPHP Meetup

[tom at supertom.com]

Phil,

The way this is done in the manufacturing world is with an "inventory
allocated" field.  This field holds the number of quantity of your current
inventory that is "held" or allocated for another purpose, such as checkout.
Similar to inventory in a store, nothing should get removed from inventory
until it is sold.  What this means to you - I would decrement inventory on
the screen, and if he is that particular about it, display both the
inventory and the allocated fields.

However, with this said, personally I feel that you need to do whatever the
customer is asking for, as long as it is in the scope and budget of the
project.  As a consultant, it is your job to inform him of the risks
involved (which you have done), but ultimately do what he asks.

Phil, I hope you are doing this job for ALOT more than the last one
(architecture for $68, remember?). :-)

Good Luck!

Tom





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  -----Original Message-----
  From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org]On
Behalf Of Phil Powell
  Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 1:37 AM
  To: NYPHP Talk
  Subject: [nycphp-talk] Yet another dissatisfied customer...


  ...am I cursed?

  Another client is threatening to "delete everything" calling my work a
"waste of time".  There is, however, one possible sane reason for this, and
I need to get some PHP guru advice on how to handle this.

  You have ordered one item and placed it into your cart.  Let's say you
ordered one small black t-shirt.  Your cart will have the product_id,
color_id and size_id for the small black t-shirt.  The quantity of this item
is, let's say 30.  You have one in your cart, so how many are available:

  1) 29
  2) 30

  Now let's say that while I ordered one small black t-shirt, Sven ordered 1
small black t-shirt, Anders ordered one black t-shirt, and Olov ordered one
black t-shirt.  If all four of us, at one time, are all ordering the same
item and putting it into our carts, how many should there be available to
us:

  1) 26
  2) 25
  3) 29
  4) 30

  This is where the contention comes in.  The client wants it done "FIFO"
(First In First Out) meaning that whoever gets it first will subtract the
quantity - but I dispute that (coming from somewhat of a Java background)
that since PHP doesn't so single-threading, that means that all four of us
could order t-shirts,  but the quantity has to reflect that all four of us
are ordering (multi-threading).

  I dunno, help!

  Phil
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