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
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