Hi
I have developed a system that does point of sale, cost calculation, stock
control, and stock ordering(manual and automatic)The program is nearing an
end and I promised Jason some lisence money(Would like to finish so I can
pay). The only remaining problem is replication. We have 2 remote branches
that needs to be syncronized(Must be able to grow to more brances). My
question is what is the best way of doing this. Here is the
scenario/problems.
We need to see pos(point of sale) data everyday at the Ho. The material db
needs to be send to the branches so they can do proper calculations and be
aware of material unavailibility. We have two options.

Option 1
Do replication once a day. This creates additional problems as the branches
needs to be able to enter some material detail. The material they enter dont
have a unique value so the key i use is a autoinc field thus I need a
trigger at the H.O to check the bill of material add a new item to the
material database and then add the item to the order list.This then gets
send as an update to the branches so they hvae the new item on their
material db they originally entered. etc etc. The other problem is the
dialup networking if I am correct you need to have ntserver on one side to
do dialup networking. To do replication with ibo4 you need dialup so that
you can connect with the db. Alternatively the ib server can be hosted on
linux but then there is a library that needs to be written/ported to linux.
Linux has very nice dial up networking.
Also all the branches must share the same customer db

Option 2
ISDN
I was thinking of perhaps for every transaction the computer can dial to the
server and post/retrieve information. I am not sure but I think IBO has a
cache function so one can minimize the times that the computer dials out.

Option 1 will be cheaper but will need more programming.
Option 2 will be more expensive but probably less error prone and less
programming.

This part of the project has been a major headache to me and I would
appreciate some feedback/ideas/suggestions. I am a single programmer and
this is my first project of this size, I sometimes feel I have bite of more
than I can chew. :-))

I hope the email is clear enough.
Groete
Gerhardus
PS
Ho/H.O=headoffice