I'm sure your answers will differ - the below represents how I would go about this.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew J Perrin - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 269 Hamilton Hall, CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Thomas Halahan wrote: > > i) What database would you use (server will be debian but > there will be at least one windows machine off of it). PostgreSQL, hands down. It's a robust, full, high-quality SQL implementation that is easily hooked to any front end you could want (Perl, PHP, even ODBC). > > ii) In what language would you write the administrators > screen for data entry and sales reports. > I would probably write it in Perl/Tk, because that's what I'm used to. It could equally well be done in Python and probably even Ruby (but I don't know much about that). I suppose you could use PHP and do the whole thing over the web, but that wouldn't be my approach. I think the language wars are overstated -- write it in whatever language you feel most comfortable using. > iii) How should the shop browsing be organised, and > similarly the online ISP browsing. Clearly it would be > easier if I were to mirror the online website with one in > the shop. > Assuming you have sufficient bandwidth, I wouldn't bother mirroring in the shop (or, alternatively, I wouldn't bother with hosting an online website outside the shop). You need to have a good, up-to-date database of stock on hand, which means both your online site and your local site need real-time access to it. The simplest way to handle that will be to have it all in one place. Good luck! ap
