[thelist] Homemade Shopping Cart Question

[Jay Blanchard]

[snip]
You thoughts on hiding items in temporary tables?,
[/snip]

When someone places a product in their cart you actually have to go
through the process of subtracting the item from the inventory. If the
customer then aborts the transaction all of the items from the temp
table then get placed back into inventory. It is analagous to walking
down the aisle at Wally-World. To wit;

I am pushing my basket down the toy aisle (it is the holidays after
all). I select the nifty retro G.I. Joe Naval Aviator and place it in my
basket. It is currently removed from inventory.

All of a sudden my cell phone rings. There is a catastrophic failure of
a Windoze database server (an all too frequent occurance) that I must
tend to immediately. I depart from Wally-World in a huge hurry, leaving
my cart in the aisle, G.I. Joe nestled safely inside. Joe is invisible
to other shoppers (for numerous reasons).

Some time later a Wally-World associate notes the abandoned cart with
the G.I. Joe in it. Dutifully the associate carefully removes Joe from
the cart and places him upon the shelf, thus returning him to
inventory--making him visible to other shoppers once again.