bigguy

Hey yall. I was asked to build a restaurant management and POS software for a local restaurant. So far the ideas I have are:
Employee Info Database
Employee Clock-in/Clock-out
Menu Edits (to add specials and new items)
Ticket Scanning
Hourly Earnings
Hourly Waiter/Waitress Earnings
Employee Hours for Week
Inventory Management

I am using ideas we used at Sonic Drive-In my old job. It was a fast food place though, so I dont know if casual dining restaurant would need the same or more or what. I have already talked to them about what I had in store for now, which is what you see above. I just thought I'd get some ideas from yall to run buy them, you know before I started Developing. Thanks again

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Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation.

mrynit

what type of hardware will you be dealing with? if its a regaler PC then the making management software in VB should work but calculating sales might be harder if the client is using a non PC cash register. you might be able to interface with it some how.

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i dont know much about programming but i try to help

bigguy

Yeah the whole restaurant uses PC's to checkout and everything, but I'm just having it where it prints out little receipts then the waiter scans the ticket number, and the ordered items and the total of the ticket is stored in that days sales database.

Also, I was wondering how to get the first line in a txt file and display its text in a textbox. This is part of the clockin process.
Employer will make a employee file containing the persons info like first name last name, address, etc, etc. The file name will be the employee's clockin/clockout number. What they will do is they will enter their number, click the Employee Number button. The program will then goto the employee#.txt file and display the first line of text which is where the employee name is stored. Then if their name is shown then they click Employee Clock-In/Employee Clock-Out button. This is to help and be sure that no one clocks in or clocked out the wrong person. I thought about doing this with a MS Access database but I'm no real good with databases yet.If yall can help me with this. I would be greatly appreciative. Thanks

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Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it. - Mark Twain

Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation.

Indigno

What language are you using?

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Perhaps I should have a sticky topic for all of the times I "return" to this forum instead of a new one every time.

ReggaetonKing

Isn't this thread in the Visual Basic.NET forum?

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bigguy

Yes I am using vb.net

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Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it. - Mark Twain

Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation.

Booooze

I would personally store the info in a database dude. Just easier to access etc in my opinion. It's not that hard to figure out once you get going. Check google for tutorials. I used MySQL with C# and it worked great after reading a bit online. I can't believe it was so easy and I hadn't bothered to use it before. Learn it, it will benefit you somehow.

As for getting features added, you should really find out what the client wants. The restaurant I work for wants a system for keeping track of tables and what not. I was thinking what he should have is a menu that he can't change, and then easily select what table ordered what.

lectricpharaoh

Above post ++. Use a database; it's really not as hard as you're probably imagining it is. If you have the full version of Visual Studio 2005, there are even wizards that make it a total no-brainer; these might be available with the Express editions as well, but as I have the full version, I have no experience with them.

Using a database is better for a number of reasons:

• You get valuable experience designing your tables and writing code to access the database.
• You can organize the data into fields without worrying about having to parse them.
• You gain the benefit of optimized search routines without any effort.
• You gain the benefit of optimized sorting routines without any effort.
• It's very easy to filter the data returned, so you can do things like easily find all kids' menu items, or all entrees with a price in a given range.
• Concurrent access is handled for you, at least with the better databases. This is a major benefit, as it would otherwise be a huge headache.
• Referential integrity can be enforced. This means, for example, no reference to a given product without that product actually existing.
• Relational databases make it easy to reduce the amount of redundant data that you keep, which means your data is more likely to be accurate.

Flat file storage is better for some things (such as where the file is a self-contained block of data describing one thing, such as a raster image or save game file). In your case, though, a database is by far the better solution, and even if it takes you a while to learn, you will probably save time in the long run. Maintenance and debugging will be an order of magnitude easier, too.

To answer your original question, thouugh, you can try a StreamReader:

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kruptof

If you find Database to difficult you could always use an XML file, I don't know about vb.net but c# has great support for xml files and type operations you can perform on them.

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DaWei

One system I'm familiar with uses a backoffice PC with a database. In a fast food environment the cash registers are repackaged PCs with a touchscreen. These are networked and receive the touchscreen contents from the backoffice machine. Card scanners are also tied into the network. In a typical restaurant environment (TGI Friday's is one customer) there are fewer cash register stations and they aren't repackaged for countertop use, but located in out-of-sight locations, with a touchscreen monitor.

Perhaps you could flirt up a TGI waitress and have a look, or talk to a manager or something. The company (I don't recall the name) is in Fort Worth. You might look them up and check out their sales information for some ideas on how these things are done.

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