France Country Pack

Overview

The France Country Pack is a specialised module designed to ensure compliance with the French government's ticketing regulations, specifically those mandated by the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée). This module is essential for ticketing systems operating in France, as it facilitates the formal homologation process required by the CNC.

Operational purpose

The primary purpose of the France Country Pack is to manage ticket numbering and ensure data consistency for ticket sales. This involves:

• Ticket numbering: Generating specific ticket numbers based on the type of ticket and the timing of its creation.
• Data consistency: Ensuring the accuracy of ticket-number series and totals, which are checked by the CNC at the end of each business week.

Technical components

The France Country Pack includes several key tasks to meet CNC requirements:

• Generate Immediate Sales Ticket Number
  • Purpose: Renumber tickets created more than 30 minutes before the session start time.
  • Operation: Runs every 2 minutes at each site.
  • Technical note: This task updates the transaction table, which can cause table locks and affect new ticket sales.
• France Audit Numbering Ticket
  • Purpose: Check and correct potential inconsistencies in ticket numbers from the last business week.
  • Operation: Normally runs once a week on Wednesday at 3 AM.
  • Technical note: This task also updates the transaction table, which can lead to deadlocks if run too frequently.
• The CNC extract:
  • Purpose: Summarises all the data from the film week in a formatted file to be sent to the CNC
  • Operation: The task called “France CNC Extract” can be run manually or can be scheduled.
  • Technical note: This task generates a formatted txt file that exhibitors must send to the CNC.

Recommended schedule for tasks

To optimise performance and minimise disruptions, the following schedule is recommended:

• Generate Immediate Sales Ticket Number
  • Frequency: Every 2 minutes.
  • Timing: Continuous operation at each site.
• France Audit Numbering Ticket
  • Frequency: Once a week.
  • Timing: Wednesday at 3 AM.

Background specifics

The CNC requires specific ticket-numbering formats based on the timing of ticket creation:

• Tickets Created More Than 30 Minutes Before Session: Must be renumbered before the session starts. In other words, every ticket created more than 30 minutes before a session has two numbers: a presale number and an immediate one.
• Tickets Created Within 30 Minutes of Session: Follow a different numbering format. In other words, every ticket created within 30 minutes only has one number: the immediate one.

At the end of the business week, an extract must be sent to the CNC to verify data consistency. If inconsistencies are found, the extract is rejected and must be corrected. The France Audit Numbering Ticket task helps prevent these issues by checking and correcting data before the extract is created.

• A CNC week starts on Wednesday (6 AM) and finishes the next Wednesday (6 AM), except for the special case of week 0.
• The CNC extracts are NOT generated at the cinema level but at the Head Office one. The task used is called “France CNC Extract”.