Dutch auctions are used when multiple items are auctioned and the winners pay the lowest bid submitted as a winning bid. This capability, which is popular in auctions where lots are involved, is the biggest hole in EveryAuction. One nice touch is that each item is given a unique ID number and URL, so listings can be directly advertised in newsgroups or links on other Web pages. There are also useful controls on who bids and who does not bid. You can also loosen the controls and allow non-registered users to bid for items or post items for auctions.
Users also have access to a search engine that indexes product descriptions and usernames.
All of the information about both users and items are stored in text files, which can easily be edited. On the surface, it may seem like a bad decision to store information in a text file rather than a database, but Perl's speed in grabbing information from text files makes up for this theoretical shortcoming. Wild West Auction , Official Demo Site . Copyright 2001 INT Media Group, Incorporated All Rights Reserved.