Late Availability

i guess the LA data has to be inputted into this 'seperate' area....so why cant cancellations (either from online or telephone transactions) be inputted into the main area and update the 'full' system?

surely, these days, any data input should be able to update 'the system' immediately.....or is the club's 'master system' not real time?

.....and is the LA system 'real time'?

if both are.....thats great......but why not just update the master system and do away with a second set of data and a separate system?

if neither are....thats pretty poor, considering the multitude of 'real time' booking systems there are out there....

if one is and one isnt........hmmmmmm

nothing wrong with the way the booking system works and is presented to the customer right through to paying....its a good, user friendly system, just interested to know why they need two.....?

in what way? I've usually found the booking system good

Peedee, it maybe that the LA data is presented differently to answer 'short term' site checking queries rather than full on holiday planning....?

i hadnt given this much thought until this OP came up.....and having designed and implemented several 'stock allocation' systems, this tickled my interest...

to respond to Alan, if pitches are put out of use and the number available drops, then this has to be reflected in the master system otherwise customers can book pitches that dont exist.

i can see an impact where, say, bad weather suddenly requires 10 pitches to be withdrawn but there were only 5 left on the system...perhaps wardens report this back to HQ where the base data is changed?

however, this would mean that 5 customers couldnt be sited.....

it would make no difference which 'system' this information was kept, the real upshot would be a shortage of pitches...

so, keeping two sets of linked data in line is, at best, extra work, and at worst, a right pain and liable to inaccuracies....

so Peedee back to your question...re 'real time'....

my gut feeling is that any pitch (room, aircraft seat) booking system 'must be real time' for accuracy, however it is possible to keep internal counters within the system to 'update stock' and avoid overbooking, leaving the 'real' updates to be carried out overnight in a batch run.

so, what of 'late availability'... I .

if a pitch becomes available (late) say within the 72 hr period, is it shown on the main system? and if not, why not?

why (from a systems perspective) is it different to a cancellation one day earlier?

my thoughts on the above are that the main system is not 'real time' and that online cancellations arent actually updated until an overnight batch run as i suggested above.

cancellations made 'in plenty of time' appear on the main system the next day, still giving the club plenty of time to resell the pitch and customers a 'good enough' picture of the real situation.

at least, the club cant oversell in this way as the extra supply (cancelled pitches) always appear a day after the event.

as they get closer to arrival time, ie within 72 hrs, the urgency to sell the pitches heightens and so a one day wait while the system gets fully up to date becomes more critical...

So, two options, either update the system real time......a big expensive change from a batch driven transaction based system.....or add a second manual 'real time' system which reacts a bit faster than the over night processing......what we seem to have.....

so, 'real time' but manually managed.....?

anyway, off to play golf