Re: Database schema

["Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh" <ilya@total-knowledge.com>]

This solution is way too complex for user, from my perspective.
And annoying.

Better way, I think, is following use case:

1. Author locks object for editing
2. Another author tries to lock object for editing
   a. If timeout didn't expire, he will not be allowed to force-unlock
the object
   b. If timeout expired, he will be prompted with message along the
lines of
       "Author X have already locked the object Y hours Z minutes ago.
Do you
        want to force the lock off? Author X will not be able to save
his changes
       in that case"
3. Author that has the lock has a small separate frame, which will show
a warning when his lock is about to timeout and a button that will allow
him to extend the unconditional lock period. Note that extending in this
scheme
is optional, and will not bother, for example, an author of UMO that has no
co-authors, and thus doesn't need to worry about someone hijacking his lock.
4. As a special case, if author tries to start editing of an object that
has already been
locked by him, he always gets an option to force-unlock it.



sergey@total-knowledge.com wrote:
>> sergey@total-knowledge.com wrote:
>>     
>>> 3. It should be a time interval allowed for Authors to finish their
>>> editings, after this time UMO should be unlocked automaticaly. It will
>>> help with situations when Authors leave their work without publishing,
>>> if
>>> they got disconnected before publishing, etc.
>>>
>>>       
>> First of all, let's not mix up "publishing" and "saving".
>> Second, time interval is fine, but on the other hand, what does one
>> do if it just takes too much time to do the edit, and yet he doesn't
>> want to save it (think: large textual change, that is still considered
>> minor edit on a published object)
>>     
>
> I've been thinking about it too and the only thing I can come up with is
> to allow Author to chose a reasonable time interval by himself when he
> gets into "editing mode", let's say, from the dropdown.
> If the time is about to expire, Author will get a warning and he may
> extend it if he wishes so. Of course, Authors should know a priori that
> their time may expire and they may lose their work.
>   

-- 
Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh
Total Knowledge. CTO
http://www.total-knowledge.com