If the local system doesn't have the item data (or thinks it doesn't have the item data, because it's looking in the wrong place) where exactly is it supposed to get the item data from if not the central system?
The total size of all item data for a store like Target can't be much more than what, a few gigabytes? Or at least the "UPC -> Price" dataset. So download the whole dataset each night, if you can't get delta changes to work.
And if that had failed somehow, it would have been noticed immediately upon the new code roll-out.
The internet was designed to be extremely resilient to host/route losses, we've made it so reliable we assume all machines are reachable at all times.
(To be fair, apparently they "do" have this but the dataset is printed on the items and the cashiers had to enter it by hand)
Their system was basically designed the way you're saying, with a fallback to grab the data from the central location if it's missing locally. What you're asking for is the same system without a fallback, which doesn't make any sense.
The fallback was the problem - design it without it, or with a manual window that pops up saying "ITEM NOT FOUND, QUERY TARGET ORACLE" or something, and the fault wouldn't have taken down the whole company.
If suddenly every cashier is being forced to hit OK on every item, people would hear about it immediately from the test rollout instead of when it hit everything (of course, assuming you have good methods for detecting things like this and don't just completely ignore associates' complaints).
