Connect currency exchange transactions and pricedb, or not?

[Christian Stimming]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Dienstag, 31. Dezember 2002 01:57, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Nicholas Lee <nj.lee@plumtree.co.nz> writes:
> > On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 12:09:01PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > > 2) The plan to use the pricedb is to store _one exchange rate per
> > >    commodity-pair per day_.  In other words, it is _NOT_
> > >    per-transaction.  Similarly, the pricedb entries are only used for
> > >    display purposes.. 
> >
> > Bad idea. There is nothing that states that any two given currency
> > transactions of a given day should have the same rate. In fact in NZ the
> > rate can move 100 points in a day.
>
> Yea, been there, done that, decided I was wrong...  The pricedb is
> just for convenience of user-input..  Each transaction can have its
> own exchange rate.

Actually I'm no longer sure that even using the pricedb for convenience of 
user-input is a good idea. Does this mean the pricedb serves a similar kind 
of purpose as the quickfill mechanism, but only for the exchange rate? Then 
I'm even more unsure about the usefulness, because all the other 
(online-imported) prices serve a different purpose. This would mean that the 
price editor shows prices with two different purposes but in one list 
(distinguished only by price-source). 

Additionally, the problem I see here in general is that it's totally unclear 
for the user that prices in the pricedb are automatically created at all. And 
IIRC changes in the multi-currency txn don't trigger changes in the 
auto-created price. The user experience is that he enters a multi-currency 
transaction, enters the exchange rate, and is happy. Enters another txn, sees 
the remembered rate ("probably similar to quickfill"), is happy. Enters many 
more txn. Then, one day the user opens the price editor, and sees a whole 
bunch of prices: "Where do these come from? And how do I know these are 
accurate at all?" -- because every txn that triggered an automatic price 
creation can always be changed later, but IIRC the price doesn't get changed 
and thus becomes no longer accurate.

Christian
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iQCVAwUBPhFyRGXAi+BfhivFAQHqowP/c7AmIhNX0eRyVggEaFwUjWWOBxSOGv61
i3bxxHxNeGXq6KDxZqSbnfaOdODXGFLUjybbBF9Bfa5JOuSJEQ2xaQmxDRdiIOnG
5e/++w2bVAkfaC3Oz44OO52T59AFvc9oymvKN0uY3ygLZbRyEuQjYIHmZuVQh/Se
0+XXZhdUtcI=
=f7Y2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----