Help on RDB & LAN options for small retail bussiness 4

[ReCycled]

For ten+ years our (third world)retail store has used our in-house developed Apps in DOS-Foxbase programs for POS invoicing and tracking sales, purchases and inventory. Some years ago we installed an unlicensed Novell server on a CeleronPC and updated some apps to Clipper 5.2. We lived hapilly, without Windows, and with our old 386s except that some historical reports took up to 2 hours to process. Our largest Table is 30MB and growing. The store uses 2 pc's for invoicing and 1 for inventory and reporting, plus the server.

Good things come to an end, and the boss and the law have decided we must obtain licenses and modernize on a limited budget.

We are considering:
1.Windows 98 or 2000 on new PC's &.not. Lynux or New Novell
2.Re-writing our apps on Dephi 6 Professional (at $1000 it eats up most of our budget) &.not. FoxPro or Access

Question is:¿Is there a beter solution?; (questions are):
1.Is Delphi Pro enough? No way we can pay for Enterprise version.
2.Will Windows LAN work ok for this?
3.Some friends say we might need Windows NT as well as SQL or something. ¿do we? ¿why, if before DOS&Foxbase was enough? ¿What IS SQL anyway?
4.Last question, If everything else is Ok, can/should we use our old .DBF tables as-is, or should we transfer data to Paradox or other type table to use on Delphi?

Please excuse the long post. We really need help.

 

[svanels]

Delphi is (in my opinion the right choice) The client-server edition would be preferable, but is much more expensive.

Data conversion use the Datapump Utility and you will get The Local Interbase Server together with Delphi Pro, (will not accept remote connections) but you can download a 5 license version of Interbase.

The Pro version does not have the SQL drivers to connect to Oracle, Informix, Sybase etc, but Interbase is up to the same strength.

Access on a network? forget it, it is good for some cookbook recipes or cd-collection, but not for mission critical networked applications.

Upsize your dbf tables to interbase.
By the way check out the Interbase and delphi forums

Regards Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[shmiller]

I would not recommend windows 98. By SQL, they probably mean SQL Server. It's good, but expensive and may be overkill.
Microsoft Access works fine in a network environment if you don't have many concurrent users. I would say with anything less than 10 it would work fine. What about Visual Basic. It's very easy to build user interfaces to work with the database.

 

[svanels]

If you want to run MS SQL-Server, you need to mount it on a NT-Server.
Interbase runs on Linux, NT server + workstation, win 95-98. etc

You can make a peer to peer network, and run Interbase in the background on one of the computers. You can put a dedicated pc, but that would only make sense for a lot of concurrent users.

About the easier to use of vb, I have my doubts Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[ReCycled]

Thanks Svanels
Thanks shmiller

Really appreciate advise, but reading it shows me how much I still need to learn before I start spending money. ¿Any books I should read? ..I better start another thread with that.

- Yes by sql I meant MS SQL SERVER.
- We plan to eliminate the dedicated server (We do not have the Novell License!)
- Have a lot of future plans for me and my Apps, but no way our retail operation will concurrently use more than 4 machines.

I thoght in DOS terms where all we needed was an OS, a LAN software and a database programing language to write our Apps. So with Windows98 (which I think will let us connect our 3-4 machines)we would cover the OS & LAN part, substituting MS DOS and NetWare, and then we would substitute FoxBase with Delphi. VB I thought more general, as is MS Basic in Dos, and Deplhi more oriented and helpfull to data managing.

If we went with Access there was this advise that it would not work well by itself if databases were large and then we would have to add a $ 1,800 MS SQL Server to the budget, not to mention NT, which when added to the new machines, etc, is not posible for us.

I now gather that just as Access uses MS SQL Server, Delphi would need to use Interbase, only that a version of Interbase that I could legaly use on a peer to peer (¿Windows?) comes included with Dephi 6 ¿Right? ¿Wrong?

Thanks again. I am reading as much as I can find in other forums.

 

[svanels]

You can download Interbase (which is a Borland product), but in Delphi pro and enterprise, Interbase comes included Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[2ffat]

Another DB to look at is Advantage Database (

http://www.advantagedatabase.com).

It has native drivers for Delphi, JBuilder, and C++ Builder. It also scales well, going from single user to server.
James P. Cottingham

I am the Unknown lead by the Unknowing.
I have done so much with so little
for so long that I am now qualified
to do anything with nothing.

 

[oharab]

Just my 2p's worth:
Access Can handle this sort of system I have databases running with 30+ concurrent users out of a possible 60 something for over a year with no problems, and I have anecdotal evidence of 100 concurrent users on a single app.
As long as each user has a separate front end file linking to the main data, many of the problems associated with Access are eliminated.
I also have a database here that accepts 150mb per month without a problem. A single Access file is limited to 1gig, but through careful normalization of the data and judicious use of linked tables, this limit can be overcome to some extent.
The problem is not with Access itself. The problem is often with the design. If the database is well designed and your network is relatively stable, then there is no reason why Access cannot meet your requirements. It also has the benefit of being relatively cheap, extremely powerful when needed and has a massive user support group.
I may be biased, but I say Access every time!
BTW: Access doesn't have to use SQL server. It does have it's own database engine called Jet, which IMHO is just fine for a file-server system.
The latest version of Office Pro (I think!) comes with MSDE which is essentially a cut down version of SQL server and comes with unlimited distribution licences. It is "optimized" (Microsoft speak for "Crippled&quot to 5 concurrent users, but it may be worth a look at.
Your best bet, is to do what you are doing now. Do your research well, check out the news groups at Google.com, ask questions about how easy it would be to do x,y,z... and make an informed decision.
I wish you all the best on your journey to enlightenment!


Ben
----------------------------------
Ben O'Hara
bo104@westyorkshire.police.uk
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[ReCycled]

Well, I gues different opinions are a lot better than none, and surely,there is more than one good solution to any given design.

I yust wanted to say thanks again for all the advise, I got more than I expected.

 

[suesloan]

You should also consider buying an existing software package instead of writing one yourself. There are many systems free to try and very inexpensive that you can download from Tucows or ZDNet. One I use is Order Desk Pro, which runs on Lotus Approach (Lotus' equivalent to Access). I got the design password with it and customized it to my needs very easily. It is not a "POS" system in some respects but it has order entry, invoicing, and inventory control. Its home page is

http://www.odpro.com.

Sue Sloan
XpertSS.com