The upcoming JAXDUG meeting is centered around code/thought exercises to solve business problems. That meeting posting makes mention of the Supermarket Pricing exercise from the Code Kata site, as well as asking others to submit ideas for exercises. I have one that is very similiar to the Supermarket Pricing, but deals in an area that is a bit more personal to me.
I enjoy comic books, and as such, I make a weekly trek out to Jax Beach to see the guys at Dragon's Tail Comics & Games. I commented once to the owner that they needed a bar code scanner to increase effeciency. The owner commented that he'd like that, except that the point of sale software didn't integrate with the accounting software. He added, though, that a distributor was going to release a point of sale/accounting system soon that was tailored to the needs of the comic book store owners.
It was that last bit that caught my attention, and I asked how are the concerns of a comic book store different from any other retailor. He told me and now I share them with you to be considered as part of the Code Kata meeting.
- One of the items sold at the store is collecticable cards. Cards generally arrive in cases, which contain packs, which contain cards. The cards can be sold in any of those denominations (cases/packs/cards) as well as specialized collected decks. Limited edition cards (foil covers, rare, holograms, etc.) might also be included in this.
- What type of cost and pricing model would you create to account for these differences?
- How would you account for the scenario of following: The store recieves 3 cases of cards. The store manager decides to sell one case as a case, and to open the other two cases and sell them as packs. Later he decides to open 5 of the packs and sell the contents as individual cards. How do you account for the change in retail value?
- When comic books come into the store, they have a fixed retail price (the cover price) for a fixed amount of time. After that time, the comics become back-issue inventory and the price can be radically different from its original cover price. What type of system would you design to account for this?
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About Jonathan Bates
Jonathan Bates is the latest President of the Jacksonville Developers User Group.
He has had a long and storied path on the way to I.T. work. At one point, Jonathan had a near Neo-Luddite position about computers, believing them at worst to be the means to humanity's eventual slavery and at best tools for general evil. After landing a job powered by such advanced technologies as Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and MS Access, Jonathan began to change his opinion on computers. He began to believe that they might be for more than just improving the display and sound qualities on his Laserdisc movies. In time, he came to see that computers were nothing more than tools, not much different then a hammer (though not as good to drive nails with).
Jonathan Bates is an industry-certified and proven developer and trainer, facilitating the transfer of knowledge from conceptual client request to delivered and implemented solution. Jonathan enjoys sharing his knowledge and understanding about development principals with like-minded people. You can generally find him enjoying good company discussing his personal Unified Theory and how programming can be used to describe it. And if you can't find him, drop him a line with a time and place and he'll find you.
Contact him at jonathan.bates@batener.org.