multiple user problem?

[***ANDY***]

Hi All,

I have a database published via IWP with an FM hosting provider. It is a hotel booking engine with a payment portal.

Naturally users don't leave the site correctly, they don't click the logout buttons provided on every page/layout, just close the browser or their session times out. This creates partially empty records which I want to delete via a script that is placed on a button that is strategically placed on a certain layout.

The script looks for a certain field being empty in all records; this field is called "TransactionID". If the field is empty it means that the payment has not been completed and the record can be deleted.

Scenario: user #1 logs into the database and begins to fill in all the required fields. Before he even gets to complete his payment and click on the PAY button, user #2 logs into the same database, he clicks the button containing the "delete records" script and while still online, the record of user #1 gets deleted because his TransactionID is empty. Is this multi user scenario possible and if yes how can I prevent the record of user #1 to get deleted?

Thank you for any help or tips whatsoever...

Andy

[Fitch]

Giving anonymous user the power to delete records is not an approach I'd take. Why does it even matter, I mean, why should users see any other records but their own?

You could use a separate "entry" table, or how about having the user enter data into global fields? That way, you don't even have to create a record until the user clicks OK, so you'll never have to worry about incomplete records.

[***ANDY***]

The reason for deleting the records is that behind every record there is a count for the hotels that the customer selects. When he enters the database he gets a variety of hotels that he can select from. Every time a customer selects a hotel the count for that hotel goes down. So if I have 50 available rooms at a Hilton and I have 40 people selecting the Hilton but actually not completing their purchase, I end up with a room count of 10 rooms left over which is incorrect. So I want to delete those "empty" records because they are useless to me and they mess up my room count.

I'm not sure how the global field option would work...

[webko]

I would probably not count the room as not available until payment has been processed. Then extraneous records don't matter...

[Fitch]

I'm not sure how the global field option would work...

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3604/~/global-fields:-an-overview

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5895

1. Create a separate layout that has global fields that correspond to your existing fields.

2. User enters data into globals, WITHOUT CREATING A RECORD. Each user sees only his/her own global values, and changing the values does not affect other users.

3. Click Submit button, run a script that verifies all required fields are filled, creates record, moves data from globals to fields in new record.

[***ANDY***]

Thank you guys; I'm currently working on trying both options, the "global" and the "room count after payment" and will see which one is more suitable for me...