Where to Start?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jude Landry
  • Start date Start date
J

Jude Landry

Hey peeps!
I am a basic programmer and computer systems manager. Our
company, quite small, (20 locations and home office) is
still using DOS based database software for our POS
software. Our home office uses Great Plains from MS and we
just upgraded our server with 2003 server.
I need to get this company up to date and don't knowe
where to start, but here are some of my goals:

1) Have a corporate website that will allow clients,
potential employees, and employees be able to communicate.
IE - our main site would have a place where you could
input your zip code or city and it would send you to the
closest website ( for clients and potential employees) to
either open an account or fill out an employement
application. Also it would have a login for employees to
get access to daily news, updates, ect.

2) Build our own POS software which is windows 32/64
compatible. It needs to be a relational database program.
I want the software to be able to share information with
other locations by a daily d/l to our main server. All of
our locations will have static IP's via dsl.

My background is pretty basic. I have been involved with
computers since I have been a child. I used to do a little
assembly programming and basic programming when I was very
young (12 or 13), then puberty took over lol! I got back
into computers while working offshore...brought a system
back from a crash while I was a bottom of the barrel
employee on the rig, next thing you know, they start
training me on solving hardware and software issues. Thats
when I started studying C++, wrote a few productive
programs for some of the engeineers out in the field. I
stopped programming after I left that job for about five
years and haven't kept up with the times. Two years ago,
our company purchased the software and source code from
our POS software supplyer...if I new how far behind the
times we were at the time, and how far behind the times
his 'new' software (Programmed is TAS 5.1) was, I would
have stopped the transaction. I have a little
understanding of VBA for Microsoft Office 2003 SB Edition
(wrote a few programs with that), some more of HTML, and
of course logical programming skills.
My questions are what type of education should I get?
Could I build an enterprise application with Access 2003
w/ VBA? Should I outsource the website stuff? Should I get
the company to buy Visual Studio.net and send me to a
Microsoft based training school? BTW I have a book on
ASP.NET about the size of huge bible, but can't use it
because I have nothing to test it on ( no server
software).
I know these questions may make some of you laff a bit,
but they are paying me well, and I feel embarrased by our
IT image, and I have no formal training (no degree), so
ANY input would be very well appreciated!
PLUR
Jude
 
Hire some professional help! Do you think that you can get the vast amount
of information that you need from a newsgroup ? Are you for real ? Jym
 
Hi,
find some thoughts below, I hope this gives you some direction. If
you want I would be glad to discuss your porblem in greater detail,
but please send me mail to my email address.

Jude Landry said:
Hey peeps!
I am a basic programmer and computer systems manager. Our
company, quite small, (20 locations and home office) is
still using DOS based database software for our POS
software. Our home office uses Great Plains from MS and we
just upgraded our server with 2003 server.
I need to get this company up to date and don't knowe
where to start, but here are some of my goals:
Click to expand...


Good start with Great Palins :)
1) Have a corporate website that will allow clients,
potential employees, and employees be able to communicate.
IE - our main site would have a place where you could
input your zip code or city and it would send you to the
closest website ( for clients and potential employees) to
either open an account or fill out an employement
application. Also it would have a login for employees to
get access to daily news, updates, ect.
Click to expand...

Yes this web stie thing seems great you can consider SharePoint and
the MS CMS server to implement a reasonable solution. There are also
free open source alternatives one could use(tak a look at
http://www.plone.org ).
2) Build our own POS software which is windows 32/64
compatible. It needs to be a relational database program.
I want the software to be able to share information with
other locations by a daily d/l to our main server. All of
our locations will have static IP's via dsl.
Click to expand...

Not sure you need to develop software from scracth. This is going to
be quite costly and slow process. Perhaps looking into ready
of-the-shelf solutions that will need some tunnig will do the work is
better approach. I do not know what POS systems you use, but perhaps
they can be well integrated with Great Plains. I owuld advise you use
some external consultant for this.
My questions are what type of education should I get?
Click to expand...

Well you are saying you are IT Manager not a developer. I would
recomend you learn about system that are on the market MS and also
others. Learn some about computer networks, databases and enterprise
applications architectures. Learn more about the Great Plains software
you got.
Could I build an enterprise application with Access 2003
w/ VBA?
Click to expand...

Well as a matter of fact you could, but with 20 different locations MS
Access is definetly a poor choice. You can use Acces only as
development environment and use MSDE (SQL Server) as backend which
will be much better in terms of reliabitlity and performance. However
to address the issue properly .Net or J2EE are better choices. SQL
Server would be the DB of choice, it is reliable and allows for
replication of data between different sites.

Should I outsource the website stuff?

I would advise you to outsource all development, not only the web
site, and look into solving the problems of your company through
communicating and managing your suppliers. I suppose your company's
business is not software or IT and what you should focus on is solving
the problems and optimizing the work of your coleagues.

Should I get
the company to buy Visual Studio.net and send me to a
Microsoft based training school?
Click to expand...

I am not sure a person alone can solve the problems you describe. You
should get training in configuring and manging the sytems your company
is using. Not go in to creating them single handed, this seems more of
a heroic then practical approach.

BTW I have a book on
ASP.NET about the size of huge bible, but can't use it
because I have nothing to test it on ( no server
software).
Click to expand...

If you got Windows 2000/XP Professional you got all you need to write
ASP.Net applications. You need to install the .Net framework it
contains compilers. However to be productive you will definetly need
Visual Studio .Net
I know these questions may make some of you laff a bit,
but they are paying me well, and I feel embarrased by our
IT image, and I have no formal training (no degree), so
ANY input would be very well appreciated!
PLUR
Jude
Click to expand...


Well if you would like send me mail, I would be glad to help you.
 
Hi Jude,

I am a Certified Solutions Provider for the Great Plains eEnterprise
accounting system. I aquired this certification because my former
employer (Masque Sound) needed to make extensive modifications to
their accounting system in order to record in the general ledger, the
interesting consequences of renting company assets as opposed to
selling items from inventory.

When I take on a project, I find the best people in the business to
mentor me.
I teamed up with Paul Roth of Paradigm Shift, and together we
attempted to make the modifications required.

We ran into several roadblocks. For instance:

1. At the time, there was no access to triggers on third party
products.

2. It was hard to tell what the application was doing because business
logic was kept in so many different places.

3. Creating new screens and maintaining a consistent look and feel was
labor intensive.

4. And lastly, after all the modifications had been made, a newer
version of eEnterprise came out with extensive modifications to the
underlying tables. Now we were stuck with out a migration path.

I am not trying to bash the product. I have a great deal of respect
for eEnterprise, and for the people at Great Plains who created it.
But all of us who have worked with it, have run into these same
limitations.

Anyway, I realized, if I ever hope to build an accounting system
capable of changing as fast as business and technology change, I would
have to stop working on the accounting system and instead, create a
program that creates accounting systems.

As I mentioned before, when I take on a project, I find the best
people in the business to mentor me. I spent three weeks with Xavier
Pacheco and Nick Hodges coauthors of a definitive book on Delphi
development. Together, we built an application generator that
addressed the limitations that I ran into when we tried to integrate
accounting with company operations.

The Goals were as follows

1. System to be a true Client Server application, with all business
logic on the MS SQL Server.

More over, all business logic in only one place on the server. i.e.
Never have to poke around to find out what the application is doing.

2. Zero Coding for common functionality, i.e. Adds, Updates, Deletes,
Audit trail, Rolling Down Data, Cascading deletes, Posting to General
ledger ect.

3. Zero Work of any kind for generation of data entry screens and
their lookups.

4. Back end to be completely independent from the front end. You can
hit the database with any application and still be sure that you have
complete security and valid data.

5. Easy navigation through out the application.

6. Consistent look and feel via OOP Inheritance and code generators.

7. Major changes in look and functionality to be made in one place and
to ripple down to all affected parts of the system without programmer
intervention. Again, this was accomplished with inheritance and also
with code generators.

This system is here now. And it is a silver bullet for application
developers.
If application development were war, having this system would be akin
to having laser guided smart bombs while the competition is using
sticks and spears.
What we have is something that can easily and inexpensively generate
robust, flexible, and feature rich, business systems in a fraction of
the time it used to take. I have been in your situation and come out
the other side with a solution to your problem

If you are interested in knowing more please call 732 406 6934 or
write to (e-mail address removed)

Best to you,
John Shearing
 
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