I work with Shopify often and the whole oversell protection thing is like a huge joke.
Oversell happens because Shopify doesn't decrement inventory until payment is confirmed. And they apparently would rather die than change that invariant.
Oversell happens because Shopify doesn't decrement inventory until payment is confirmed. And they apparently would rather die than change that invariant.
I could see a historical moment where Shopify, sans that invariant, massively fucked up inventory counts from uncompleted transactions... then had to unwind all that when a bunch failed to clear payment.
Ergo, now there's an invariant.