Hi,
I've probably placed close to a thousand snipes on AuctionSniper, with never a problem. But just hours ago I got hit by the strange bug others have reported - you know, snipe placed on your auction WAY early, like 12 hours or more, and the item name and end time has nothing to do with your auction.
I do client-server software for a living - and this sure looks like a concurrency (thread-safe) problem. You probably have periodic processes that run, checking for auction end times, snipe due date times, so that you can place bids and also send early warning e-mail alerts if the auction price exceeds the snipe price.
I have no idea about your system architecture - but if you're using a non-thread safe object, or perhaps a singleton remoted object, then what happened to me (and others) makes sense. I.e., the non-preemption safe object is in the middle of checking MY auction. That thread of execution is preempted by another execution thread checking on some completely different auction. It changes (corrupts) some of MY auction's stuff (name, end date-time), and then exits. Meanwhile, the thread for MY auction resumes, and decides (due to corrupted end date-time) that it's time to place a snipe. And the auction name is now from the other auction.
Does this make sense? It would sure explain the relatively rare, sporadic nature of this problem. Also supporting this idea is that fact that the snipe bids DO get placed - so it appears to be a prep / checking problem rather than the actual, high-priority placing of the snipe.
Anyway, good luck. Hope that you find the problem. I was sure amazed to find out that a snipe had been placed on an Italian auction for a leather jacket, instead of some farm brochures! I can give you the specific auction number if it would help debugging.
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