Do it the way the online ticket reservations systems work. That is, temporarily reserve the number of kids that she wants to sign up.
So, the process goes like this: -- she logs on and checks to see if three spots for her three kids exist, or one spot, etc. .. whatever the case may be. -- she then confirms that she'd like three spots. Three spots are immediately ... but only temporarily ... reserved for her; -- she is then told in a bold font that she has ten minutes to complete her transaction; -- if she successfully completes and registers her kids, the spots are permanently reserved for her family; -- if not, then after ten minutes the spots are put back into the "inventory" for anyone's use. Sites that book specific theater seats do the same thing. Your specific seat request is reserved temporarily while you complete the transaction. Cheers, Ian -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dan Stein Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 11:36 AM To: Multiple recipients of list witango-talk Subject: Witango-Talk: Courses Full? Looking for suggestions. I have a community school application that allows users to sign up for courses on line. For 90% of the courses the max amount of classes is not critical. One or two over makes no difference. And class demand is not high. Therefore this system works fine. When a user selects a course it is put in their basket. When the pay for the course(s) the course count is increased by one and if it is = or > course max then course is closed. But now we are adding these kids swim program courses. They are limited and highly competitive to get in. Probably 150 people will sign up kids between 8 and 10 AM the 1st day. My problem is how to keep the course count accurate when they sign up more than one kid in their family. So here is the scenario. Mrs. Smith has 3 kids She logs into the site and goes to registration She gets a drop down list of her family members. She picks bill and swimming and puts course 1401 in her basket ( there is room for 32 kids and bill makes number 32) She then goes to add Jill She selects the same course Without counting Bill it is still open but in reality if she were to pay for Bills course now it would be closed. The system will think it is open and allow her to add Jill but now we are one over. The other issue is with so many people signing up at once while a course is open when you 1st sign up by the time you get to the checkout it might be closed. I can deal with this last one I guess by checking the course count again before checkout and if the course is now closed show them that and wait list them removing the charge. Any other thoughts on how to handle this? -- Dan Stein Digital Software Solutions 799 Evergreen Circle Telford PA 18969 Land: 215-799-0192 Mobile: 610-256-2843 Fax 413-410-9682 FMP, WiTango, EDI,SQL 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.dss-db.com ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text/US ASCII email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe witango-talk in the message body
