[ic] Can Interchange do this?

[Bas Bezemer]

Hi Justin and Marc.

Sorry Marc, but I can't agrea with you. Just a few thoughts that crossed 
my mind concerning  your client.

 >I have a client that has items that he would like to rent.
 >
 >He needs an application that can schedule and rent the items for 
specified periods of
 >time.  The application would need to make sure that the item is not 
currently rented or
 >scheduled to be out for repairs before allowing the client to rent the 
item.
 >

IC probably does not  have an out of the box solution for you. But I 
think IC could do the trick. Your own experience with IC could be the 
limiting factor.

I see similarities between your problem and the "Out of Stock" 
discussion that is currently going on. The control parameter there would 
be the number of items a costumer  would like to order. In your case the 
control parameters would be the desired start date and the end date of 
the contract.

In my opinion the following should be done:
1) Make a table fields for the article number, start date and end date.
2) Add the attributes "start" and "end" to the cart for each article in 
it. Just like the attributes color and size.
3) Before ordering check  for the following in the table mentioned 
above: look for a start date and end date later than the desired start 
date, and earlier than the desired end date. If so the article is 
already booked.
4) If the check is passed succesfully, add the start and
end date for the article (new entry) to the schedule table.

Regards,
Bas