[Nottingham] SQLite and 'locking'

[David Aldred]

On Tuesday 27 February 2007 11:21, Duncan John Fyfe wrote:
> If you use NULL to flag 'available' how do you record a seat as
> 'unavailable and not booked' (eg. seat 10 has been broken) ?  
> Here is a new perfectly reasonable 'not booked' state.
> To accommodate this in your NULL based scheme you must change the
> database

Not that I'm planning to use null for 'available', but surely this depends on 
the intended purpose of the database?

All I'm interested in at the moment is whether a seat is available for 
booking.  If it's not, then users can't book it, and that's all they need to 
know!

I can see that for a wider application (such as a general theatre management 
system) a more detailed approach would be necessary - but for a booking 
system for a local theatre group who don't even have a fixed theatre to 
manage, ISTM that putting something which can't be a valid booking reference 
into the 'bookedby' field is all that's needed if a particular seat is 
unavailable.

-- 
David Aldred