I'm an ancient dBase programmer and I have designed a few business applications in FM a few years back. I now have the opportunity to design and sell a retail POS Golf Course solution which would involve scanning member's barcoded IDs, indicating type of service (9 holes, 18 holes, gas cart, etc.) collecting money, issuing receipts and submitting reports at the end of each day.

Can FM handle this kind of frantic activity in terms of speed? Is it a good solution for retail services? Can it be compiled as I could do in dBase.

Thanks for your help.

I do not consider what you have listed as enough frantic activity to bring down FM. FM should be able to handle all the aspects of a POS system. If you create a runtime, you can have it as a statnd alone system.

Thanks for your input John.

I'm not really concerned about crashing FMP but rather having a sluggish response to constant input via barcode scanners and/or keyboard.

This POS would handle two 18 hole golf courses where we will get 500 players a day during peak season. 50 players will be lined up before we open the doors in the morning and we will have 2 cashiers serving them.

We have 9000 registered members with a unique 5 digit member ID.

I am planning to use an Epson receipt printer for greens fees which features a 3 part form validator to date/time stamp the gas rental carts.

Lots of activity...I've been very pleased with the solutions FMP has provided but this one is a little different and I need to feel comfortable about my choice.

Thanks again

Greg

Hi Greg,

We have 9000 registered members with a unique 5 digit member ID.

FileMaker now handles terabytes of information quite happily... as long as you don't go start dumping too many files into container fields I don't think you'll have any issues, all your doing is dealing with text data... no matter how much it is, it's text. You'll find a lot of people on these forums dealing with Gigabytes of text based information -- millions of records with good performance, so I don't think 9000 will pose any huge issues.

If your worried, create a new file, make 10 fields, make a new record and fill in the data then make something like the following script:

Set Variable[$i ; 1]

Loop

Duplicate Record

Exit Loop If[$i = 10000]

Set Variable[$i ; $i + 1]

End Loop

Now you have some information in your db, play with it and see how responsive it is.

Thanks Genx

Thats exactly what I needed to hear. You people are GOOD!

Greg