2 shops at different loations?

[Aboulaly]

Hey Guys,
My brother rang me today, asking me if I can help a friend of his, who has 2 stores at different locations and he wants to make a setup, where he could find out what stock he has in all shops, from all 7 computers, and he is looking at opening new shops as well which need to be added to same network later on, now Networking is not my specialty and I wasn't able to give him an answer, but I promised him that I will ask here for some help and directions, so if anyone knows how it could be done and wouldn't mind directing me in the right way or to the right people, and as to what is needed, it would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[Woodstock]

do both locations have Internet (adsl?) ?

[ocd_csv]

simple way is to have a database server with all the required stock levels/prices etc

Then the frontend simply connects to the server and displays the information.

For the remote shops this would be done via the internet or VPN depending how secure you want the system
But basically the same method works

[davo]

Yep
Modular Retail package is what is needed.

Main database at Headoffice.
Front end at store front.
You can even have Accounts Payable and Receivable as other modules to.

So 1 entry per Item on record and has Location Ids as to where/which store it is located at. So on lookup of stock defaults to your Location ID first then shows you stock level at other location IDs.

but look into Retail Manager or similar Im sure there is something out there.

hxxp://myob.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1140990420470&pagename=MYOB%2FProduc t%2FBusinessProduct&site=en_AU&c=Product

This started off Years ago called Digitill (till MYOB acquired it) My company was amongst the first to run Digitill/Retail Manager in WA in the Mid to late 90's and I was involved in setting up many stores on contract basis. them were the days.

But easy back then, not sure about now there are lots more features in this now, but was great when we used it.

Cheers

Davo

[Aboulaly]

I believe all shops will be having or already have internet, and what I thought that a data base server will be needed, ofcourse I won't be the one to do the setup because it's way out of my league, so just roughly how much would this guy be looking at to have a full functioning system?

[crypto7]

Depending on internet speeds and database setups performance can be very good to very very poor.

A real client server setup/database is the best choice. File share client side dbs (eg: access) are very poor.

With a real database, MS SQL, MySQL, Postgres etc.. the client sends a query to the server "get me all the stock items that have ......" to the server, and ONLY get the actul needed records sent back from the server.

Databases such as MS Access will drag the whole table over the network, then drop the records it does not want.

An option could be to setup a windows server 2003 or later with x Lic of Remote Desktop. Then each site could connect via the RDP session to the core server.

You will need to scope out what the need, then look at the options, then find the best fit.
eg: RDP may be no good. May only have access to these Apps etc..