[Zope] Is e-commerce feasible with Zope?

[Kevin Dangoor]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pavlos Christoforou" <pavlos@gaaros.com>
To: "Kevin Dangoor" <kid@kendermedia.com>
Cc: <zope@zope.org>; "Diego Dainese" <xdsi@xddainese.unive.it>
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2000 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Zope] Is e-commerce feasible with Zope?


> On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, Kevin Dangoor wrote:
>
> > (Note that, from what I've read in previous threads, I would have to
have 5
> > people create new shopping carts at the same instant in order for one of
> > them to run into an error. That's a lot. When I said that the site would
>
> Actually there would be no problem (theoretically at least and depending
> on the cart implementation). If more users than threads are accessing Zope
> simultaneously the extra users would just have to wait their turn. Even so
> the underlying ZServer implementation is *very* fast and even in single
> thread mode the clients will get the feeling they are served
> simultaneously.

The problem, as I remember it, is that carts are stored within a single
container. If two people simultaneously try to create carts, a ConflictError
is raised for one of them. But, it will automatically retry. After x number
of retries, any error page is presented to the user (yuck). My "5" number
above is incorrect... you would need a steady stream of lots of people
trying to create carts, such that people are getting lots of ConflictErrors.
This is correct, isn't it?

Once the cart is created, people can obviously make lots of changes to their
carts with no problems. This may become less of a problem when we've got a
membership system up and running, because carts for members will be in their
own area.

If it did become a problem for me, all I'd need to do is come up with a
reasonable partitioning scheme. Come to think of it, even with lots and lots
of users it would probably still be possible (and nice) to keep the carts in
the ZODB.

Kevin