Point of Sale (POS) Application

[eluser]The Questioner[/eluser]
obiron2, some of your points are interesting and you are right in stating that technology has advanced significantly. The undeniable truth is that the future of technology is the internet. It’s just that I don’t think we’ve quite got there yet.

1. You’re significantly underestimating the awkwardness of configuring and implementing legacy hardware, such as parallel and serial port hardware (cash drawers still widely use this technology). These are not plug and play (like USB), nor can you use a USB convertor/emulator (they don’t work properly). Some hardware has pass-through port functionality, which compounds these problems (e.g LED pole display with pass-through connector for accompanying thermal printers).

PC manufacturers have stopped building machines with old, legacy ports. So most of the time you will need to fit and install PCI serial/parallel cards into each client’s workstation (assuming that there is a free PCI slot available). The concept of a maintenance-free, thin-client is thus simply not true. An engineer will have to be on-site to take of these matters.

In addition, many clients commonly have existing EPOS hardware which your software will also need to capacitate for (i.e don’t assume that clients will only purchase/use your recommended hardware).

2. AJAX has improved the experience of web technology, but is still woefully behind what is possible with traditional desktop interfaces. Can AJAX even begin to emulate controls such as Infragistics, CodeJock or FarPoint – without suffering from speed lag (constantly having to refer back to the web server to pull data, even if only a DIV element is being updated)? AJAX will not work if Javascript is not enabled or if the client is using an older or non-standard web browser.

3. All applications can be defined as “…acitivity occur[ing] around specific and definable activity patterns…normally requir[ing] the same steps to be repeated. Linear process flows like this can easily be achieved…”, but this doesn’t change the reality that you will still need to add a lot more functionality just to sit on the same level as your standard competitor.

On a business level, clients don’t really care what technology you use to build their system, as long as it does the job to the best of what is available. PHP is (or any web technology) is not the best of what is available for EPOS applications (compared to standard application development languages).

Like all web technology PHP is not compiled, needs extra security layers/complexity (SSL) to communicate securely with the backend, needs extra layers/complexity (AJAX) to provide a decent interface, and can take over three times longer to develop than a desktop application – even with our beloved CI.

4. Again, this is extra complexity and maintenance with little benefit over desktop applications. An engineer would have to visit on-site and set-up all of these additional facilities, and then he would be roped into constantly supporting and maintaining them as well.

5. “…I would rather have my data in a data center with military level security (electronic and physical) than have to maintain my own servers and do my own data backups…”. However, the reality is that many clients would insist on “owning” all of their own data in-house where they can keep an eye on it and know 100% who has access to it. They may already have backup and maintenance schemes in place for other existing systems, or may not want to pay the additional charge of outsourcing the backup. You need to think in terms of business rather than technical.

As for the other points:

“Maximum flexibility on hardware. A PC stops working - swap the box. Because there is no software installed, you can get a new till up and running almost instantly”
Unless you have to change the PCI legacy port card, or install and configure the EPOS hardware for the new PC.

“Instant data - From a head office perspective, realtime data on trading activity is a big win for SASS solutions.”
“Mobility - managers can access the system from anywhere they can get an internet connection.”
Yes, you are correct. One of the main issues for EPOS systems is the ability to communicate, centralise and coordinate data from multiple physical locations. It is on this point that a web-based solution holds its strongest basis. This is a major weakness for traditional desktop EPOS systems.

“Low running costs. One application, no client side software upgrades, payment plans based on concurrent users or volume of database activity, No DBAs, no redundancy failover hardware.”
Again, this depends on the EPOS hardware, the PCI legacy card, the backup Apache server, the broadband router, the web host data maintenance plan and charges, etc.

“Low selling costs. Simply set up a trial company database and the system is up and running. No customer visits, no complex installation process, NO UPGRADE VISITS!!!!!”
This is easily possible with existing desktop EPOS systems.