I should have mentioned that I use a *normalized* database wharehousing pattern where each row represents a distinct item being purchased. There could be fifty rows corresponding to a single order transaction like what you would see in something like an itunes music purchase. So using the auto increment id would not work to differentiate between orders. Another user mentioned microtime. -----Original Message----- From: Jochem Maas [mailto:jochem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2008 6:06 PM To: Tom Shaw Cc: 'PHP General' Subject: Re: 2 Questions. Tom Shaw schreef: > Can anybody give me any good reasons not to use a time stamp as an order > number in my shopping cart. It seems to me that the number is guaranteed to > be random and it saves having to make an extra time column to keep track of > the order. The only small concern I have is the chance that somebody orders > at the exact same time as somebody else but the chance of that has got to be > incredibly small but possible. > 1. order number are often *required* (for accounting purposes) to be consecutive 2. the chance is small, yet it is there ... agravated by the fact that most orders are placed during a concentrated period of the day. I have no idea what you mean by 'extra time column' and/or using it to keep track of an order... but most DBMSs have the ability to auto store a timestamp into a field when the given record is created. oh ... timestamps are hardly random. > > > My second question is I've designed a very simple Postgres database wrapper. > The methods are exactly what you would assume to see in any db wrapper a > pg_query, pg_fetch_array. My question is in the db wrapper, is there an easy > way to always include the table name as an index in all my pg_fetch_array > returned results? The reason I ask is when designing my tables I'm delegated > to prefixing my column names i.e. users_name instead of just name or > forum_posts instead of just posts to make sure there's no collision. > have your simple wrapper do something like: $sql = "SELECT foo AS {$tablename}_foo FROM {$tablename} WHERE 1"; with regard to generating the query. if your wrapper doesn't generate the SQL then you'll have to parse the given SQL and rewrite it ... good luck with that. > > Cheers > > > > Thomas Shaw > > Php.coder@xxxxxxxxx > > > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
