Re: Impossible Database Design?

Nikolai Onken wrote:
I didn't tell you yet:
I wanted to go to buy tickets to Israel today and guess what..
Inbetween the time our agent called her agent to find out the price and
the call she made to confirm the flight after we decided that it was
the right flight the price of the flight raised by 6 percent... yeah
the guys who have writte that kind of software must have had a good
imagination of time and sense.

[You're stepping on my toes, today...]

I did a couple projects for a US air carrier. Prices change all the
time. Most travelers realize that prices increase as departure time
nears. Most travelers don't realize that prices on some legs drop
like a rock as departure time gets very near. Shop wisely if price
is your criterion.

You mentioned Israel: was that an international flight? Price
fluctuations in that arena don't happen - at least, not the way I
gathered from your description. Something else is in the mix...

Better than that our agent had to tell us after we said that we want
the flight, that the online based system crashed and that she would
have to call us back today or tomorrow - with no guarantee whether the
price stais or whether the flight actually would be still available

I doubt it was "the" system.

(since yeah of course 500 other people could have tried to book the
same flight at the exact same point...)...
Anyways... of course i don't know why their system crashed but
obviously these guys didn't have a clear idea how to handle time in
their software...

I suspect the contrary is true.

Not only where they not able to make an offer without having the price
change within 5 minutes because the system is online based, but they
where not even able to freeze a reservation or so....

Price changes don't have anything to do with whether "the system is
online based." As for "freez[ing] a reservation:" that depends on
with whom you're dealing; it might be time to buy better agency.

I don't even want to know how they handle price changes every few
minutes and stuff in a relational database :)

Very easily - but I suspect the underlying model their system uses is
network rather than relational.

Luckily we have processors who can handle 64bit ...

Your 64 bit processors ain't nothing compared to the processors they're
using.

and dates until
forever...

We'll just have to wait to see whether or not that's true.
.

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