what are these DB tables for?

[petermichaux]

Hi,

 

I'm new to osCommerce and am trying to understand what the various tables in the database do. I'm confused about what these ones are for and how they are interpreted.

 

1) counter, counter history. What do these count? Why do you need a history?

 

2) zones, geo_zones, zones_to_geo_zones. What I don't understand is why both zones and geo_zones.

 

3) sessions. What is this for?

 

Any insight greatly appreciated!

 

Peter

[Wendy James]

counter is for the counter on your site at the bottom

 

zones are used for shipping, and taxes you can see that in your admin localizations page

 

sessions keeps track of the customers so when they add stuff to the cart it stays in the cart

[petermichaux]

counter is for the counter on your site at the bottom

 

zones are used for shipping, and taxes you can see that in your admin localizations page

 

sessions keeps track of the customers so when they add stuff to the cart it stays in the cart

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Thanks. What are the geo_zones for?

[Wendy James]

I made a mistake above, the zones are in the locations/taxes area, not localizations.

 

Zones would be states, or provinces. Geo zones is the tax zones.

zones to geo zones would be the country and state the taxes are associated with, I believe.

[jon_l]

Zones are states, counties, provinces.

 

Geo zones are geographical zones made up of countries (and zones if you want).

 

They are not solely for tax, they are also used by shipping modules (if you want). I've also seen a number of contributions that use them as well (the geo zones settings).

 

It might seem complicated at first (made worse by confusing text labels in admin), but it actually provides an incredibly flexible way to control both the tax and shipping settings.

 

Jon.

[petermichaux]

It does seem complicated! I can see the use of both but the implementation seems like some function is lost for the geo_zones.

 

If I understand correctly, the geo_zones could be used to create a special county tax for just one county. But when a customer signs up who lives in that county how would osCommerce know to apply that special tax to that customer?

 

What other examples could geo_zones be used for?

[jon_l]

I'm in the UK and use the geo zones as follows:

 

- Tax. Two geo zones setup, one for the EU (we have to charge tax on all orders shipped within the EU) and one for the Rest of the World. I then have seperate tax rates setup for each of the two geo zones.

 

- Shipping. Three geo zones setup, one for the UK, one for the EU and one for the Rest of the World. I have three shipping modules defined, each one is assigned to the relevant geo zone.

 

I think there are a lot of users that don't understand how geo zones work. Its a pity as it is very powerful and allows a lot of flexibility for tax, and shipping / payment modules.

 

With payment modules you can use them to restrict which payment methods are available to customers in certain countries. For example, credit card payments from all countries but cheques only from customers in your own country.

 

Jon.

[petermichaux]

Hi Jon,

 

Thanks for the help. If I understand correctly then the geo_zones are just groupings of zones. Perhaps geo_zones would have been better named zone_groups.

 

Thanks again,

Peter