[Gllug] Argos site

[Mike Brodbelt]

* Simon Stewart <sms at lateral.net> [020801 10:56]:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 10:58:00PM +0200, Dave Jones wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 09:59:21PM +0100, Mike Brodbelt wrote:
> > 
> >  > I too have issues with the Odeon website.
> > 
> > I got curious about this a while ago, and poked around a
> > bit to try and figure out what exactly it was trying to do.
> 
> *cough* *ahem*
> 
> There's also
> rumblings about it being something to do with the way that one of the
> partners supplied content. Personally, I think the latter is a load of
> rubbish.

Oh, don't be too sure. I could tell a story or two, I could.....

Once upon a time, I used to work for a nameless company that sells the
ticketing systems used by some cinema chains in the UK. The software was
.... interesting... shall we say. They had a variation on the compile,
run, ship philospophy which sometimes missed out the "run" stage,
causing the odd problem or two. These days, the entire system is written
in Visual Basic and Microsoft access. Shudder...

Imagine, if you will, the software that a chain uses for ticket booking.
These days, they have a central booking office, that processes all the
bookings, and deals with the credit card charges. This office has
software that communicates with each individual site's systems, to
update the ticket sales and seat allocation data at the site. I'd say
"sales database", but applying the term "database" to what was in use
would be a horrible miuse of terminology. We'll just call it "file soup"
and draw a kindly veil over the details. So, it was go-live day on a
large central booking installation.

Our protagonist, an impoverished student, decides to splurge, and take
his girlfriend to the late show of some movie. They get to the cinema
just before the box office shuts. He buys two tickets on his student
credit card, and proceeds to watch the film. Unknown to him, the credit
card software has an "unexpected" interaction with the new central
booking office. All credit card sales for the *entire* *cinema* *chain*
that day get charged to his credit card. The system performs no online
authorization, it just prepares and submits a BACS file, containing some
30,000ukp worth of transactions (all in individual 5 or 10ukp units),
and merrily sends this off to the bank. The bank computer promptly
throws a wobbly. Upon returning to his halls of residence, our hero
wanders innocently into the waiting arms of the law, and is driven
away..... 

I believe that the student in question enjoys a lifetime of free tickets
at the cinema chain in question......

Mike.

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