Version 6.75.03

This update contains significant change to the anonymous login process for the web and a couple of other web fixes for multiple types of browsers (especially Internet Explorer)

Version 6.74 • Updates

Released Feb 9, 2006

Key changes:

Assignment of anonymous patron number changed for web browsing
Refined cart cleanup process
Prevention of 'releasing' web holds from the box office unless a master user
Display of hold timeout on selling map and play & dates. .

Note: Read prior release notes for any mandatory web pages changes. There are no mandatory web page changes for this version.

Theatre Manager will

Remove all shopping carts that belonged to anonymous browsers from the database (this means carts where the user never identified themselves)

Update the access for all employees (except master users) to prevent ability to release holds marked as internet

The user will need to

Before upgrade	Read the release notes for any version prior and follow the directions Stop web sales and close all shopping carts. Then manually release any left over 'i' holds in any events that you need to do this in Complete your end of day. Deposit all funds, create all sales entries and post to the GL. Verify the database using data utilities and ensure that everything is ok. Make a backup copy of the database
After upgrade	None required
Optional Steps	None Required
Time Required	Updating the database from 6.71 or later is about 5 minutes. The time is dependant of the number of anonymous shopping carts in the database

Before upgrade

Read the release notes for any version prior and follow the directions
Stop web sales and close all shopping carts. Then manually release any left over 'i' holds in any events that you need to do this in
Complete your end of day. Deposit all funds, create all sales entries and post to the GL.
Verify the database using data utilities and ensure that everything is ok.
Make a backup copy of the database

After upgrade

None required

Optional Steps

None Required

Time Required

Updating the database from 6.71 or later is about 5 minutes. The time is dependant of the number of anonymous shopping carts in the database

Web Sales

One major change to this version is how the anonymous patron number is assigned. Previously, it was done as a random number. In busy sites, this might cause an issue where the anonymous cart could previously exist. The patron number is now assigned to be the same as the cart number when a patron hits the web site for the first time. This change should ensure that no two patrons ever get the same cart number.

The second major change regards the setting of the common time for synchronizing multiple web listeners. While this was only really for sites with multiple listeners, it is used in all web listeners. The time was supposed to synchronize with a common reference each 4 seconds (it did) and reestablish the benchmark each time the listeners restarted after backups. This last part was not working correctly - which led to an integer overflow. Meaning, that after a period of time, if the overflow was reached, patrons would see errors saying that their cart had timed out - when in fact - it had not. Sites that started their listeners weekly (or relatively often) would not see this issue.

And the third major change addresses the different behaviour of Internet Explorer and cookies compared to all other browsers tested. IE seems to send back the most recent cookie, regardless of the page in the history list that the user navigated to. It was possible for the cookie to be completely different than the contents of the form on the page. Now that we've seen this, its been fixed in Theatre Manager and people using IE will hve seats released properly as they browse, as well as prevent them from using the back/forward button.