April 7, 2010 at 10:11 am
Hi all, I'm new to the site and in general new to SQL as well. I heard about the site from a past co-worker of mine and am hoping to learn as much as I can here.
I've played around with Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 and built a small database.
I have a few questions if anyone could provide me with some information or point me in the right direction I would appreciate any help.
What I am looking at doing involves the following:
1. A customer purchases a product
2. The local POS connects to an Off-Site server through the store's main POS (I'm guessing here this is the way a retail store would be setup)
3. Some validation is done by cross checking information sent from the retail store with the external database
The questions I have are:
1. Is this feasible? Would it take too long for this kind of validation? By too long I mean the customer waiting in line.
2. If a better solution where to have local databases in each retail location sync up with the master database which would be off-site, is that ridiculously complex? Would it be possible to store only a few tables locally?
3. I am looking at having new data be entered into the database through a form submitted on a website. I assume this is possible but am not completely sure. Any ideas on how to implement this or what tools/programming is required?
4. Any SQL recommendations as far as products go? I was told about SQL Compact Edition but this limits connections to the database at any one time to 256. This would be fine in the early stages but if this idea takes off I foresee a lot more connections. Best to start with Express and scale up as needed is what I am assuming? Anyone disagree or have a better idea?
Once again, I am pretty much a complete novice at this and I thank you for your patience and any information you guys can provide me with!
Thank you!
😀
April 8, 2010 at 3:38 pm
1- Yes. Depends on infrastructure and design.
2- No. Yes.
3- Sure you can do it. Dozens of choices.
4- Depends on the features you want to have available.
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.April 8, 2010 at 4:09 pm
1. Yes. And I would probably say yes on too long. The question is, what kind of validation?
2. In many (most?) POS setups with multiple stores, you have a master list of products that is kept at a HQ site. This is replicated down to each store site as well as other lookup data. Each store should have their own copy of data to reduce latency and for business continuity reasons. ie: the HQ WAN link is down, nobody can do business = BAD! I would also probably use transactional replication where I could.
3. Yep, and as the other poster mentioned, LOTS of choices.
4. SQL Compact is a VERY different product from SQL Express, I like SQL Compact, but for your app with an eye towards a potential expansion, I would probably work with SQL Express on the POS side and SQL Standard on the HQ side.
I have a POS background, and one of the big considerations is keeping the system running even if there isn't an HQ readily availalbe to connect to. I tend to view the stores as islands, they need to have enough data locally to do their work without needed any help from the mainland.. And enough capacity locally to store whatever transactional data might be queued up for HQ for several days, maybe even a couple weeks.
CEWII
April 8, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Thank you both for your replies.
PaulB - Is there an easy way to describe or point me to something (a name, a website) that would talk about the infrastructure that would support this? Would ASP.Net be one of the options to update the database via a website from?
Eliot - Thank you for sharing your POS and replication knowledge. I was assuming that data would have to be stored locally as you mentioned so at least I know I need to plan for that when making the database.
Thanks again guys for your input.
April 9, 2010 at 8:57 am
You are very welcome.
CEWII
April 9, 2010 at 11:57 am
PaulB - Is there an easy way to describe or point me to something (a name, a website) that would talk about the infrastructure that would support this? Would ASP.Net be one of the options to update the database via a website from?[/quote]
Sure. I would start here... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb398986(v=VS.90).aspx
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply