1) Carefully plan for reporting -- it's not as easy on the Mac as the PC, if you ask me. There are a lot of reporting tools available on the PC side, but one option is dominant on the Mac. I've used Ace, Crystal, Shaazam, QuickReports, and several others in conjunction with custom apps on the PC. My only experience on the Mac was *watching* someone use OTR to create reports.
Tip: I'd use a PC for reporting -- I am a MacBook Pro user with my research data in MySQL. I still use Parallels and Windows-based reporting tools because there just aren't as many Mac choices. 2) Simple industry, no problem. Anything medical, financial, or in any way highly regulated, plan for HIPAA, S-O, audit trails, data retention... etc, etc, etc. I had a business that did a lot of government sales and we had to comply with so many regulations -- and prove compliance -- that a simple POS solution didn't meet the legal nonsense. We ended up using a commercial package and writing external code that used the same SQL database. Tip: Today, if you need to worry about data regulations, any commercial database or PostgreSQL will do. Most support the password requirements, backup with ease, and can be used with numerous reporting tools. MySQL's license is a nightmare, it seems, unless the development tool comes with a redistribution license (some do, and *most* commercial ODBC drivers meet the MySQL legal requirements for commercial deployment). On the Mac side, we had a number of adventures with devices. The easier approach, now that I know better, is to use a printer with a native OS X driver and I'd never hassle with a cash drawer again -- let the printer handle the drawer. Sure, you can make a USB/serial cash drawer work by sending the bell character, and you can even test the open/close state of the drawer, but it was a pain. Inventory control remains a major reason to use a database, but think carefully before trying to reinvent the wheel. Will this really save money and time over the long run? Commercial applications can be "cheaper" if a solution already exists that's "good enough" for your purposes. - CSW _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
