POSnet what if...

[ProDeZigner]

So I started thinking... this is probably a shot in the dark and worth testing...

Why can't POS be ran OVER a network, instead of having a local folder, running the POS directly from the server? Wouldn't all the registers maintain the same data as the server? Or am I just letting my mind wonder too much?

[Andrew]

It's quite possible - but I personally wouldn't recommend it - for data integrity reasons. Also, the local folder is important for holding data pertinent to that individual register - you get multiple copies of the POS executable accessing some of those files which are not meant to be shared by multiple registers and you could (not definitely, but it's a possibility) end up in trouble.

Trust me - it was a long road getting to the point of networking POS, it works - to tinker with it for the sake of tinkering seems dangerous to me. I've also not known any application I've used to be started from over the network, it's always installed locally yet may indeed access it's data from a server on the network.

I assist in the maintenance of a Citrix environment at work, where about 150 people connect daily. If you're not familiar with Citrix, basically the applications run on the server but are presented on the user's screen, this spares us IT gophers installing applications on the individual workstations. Even in this setup, while the applications are "running" on the server - each user is running their own instance of an application and Citrix controls the resources appropriately, whereas just opening an EXE multiple times over a network is what I consider uncontrolled.

[ProDeZigner]

Yeah, I see your point Andrew.

Thanks for clearing that up. As for networking the registers, for anyone interested, the announcement Dale made on here for networking help, I posted a link from an old thread that walks you through step by step.