Well to specifically answer your question "can" it be
done, sure if you know how do it!
We use a system called Micro$ale for our restaurant
location inside a small airport terminal. We have two
terminals, but you could just as easily use one I suppose.
We have an older version of the software (3+ years) and it
writes all the data to several Access database files. My
knowledge of Access has come in quite handy sometimes when
we're run into problems and/or error messages! It works
great for the size of the location, but I'm not so
confident in it's abilities to handle a lot of data and/or
terminals. Here is the link to the site:
http://www.microsale-pos.com/
In their own defense, their latest version may be much
more stable than our current version and may handle
multiple terminals much easier. To be honest, I'm not even
sure if the latest version actually uses Access/Jet data
tables.
There are many POS systems out there and I would suspect
most if not all write their data to tables in some
fashion. The higher end systems I'm sure use SQL tables on
a back-end server setup. More money, but better
reliability. Micros is one of the higher end names and has
been around a long time, but they are not cheap. We have
always referred to our Micro$ale system as "the poor man's
Micros."
If you're in the market for a POS system I would seriously
consider a small company right here in Bend. They are
called Sasse Systems. These guys did not sell us our
current system, but have gone COMPLETELY out of their way
to help me with hardware/software problems. The amount of
support I've received from them is beyond belief. I can
only imagine the great support they give to clients that
they have sold complete systems. They sell a system called
PixelPoint POS. Here is their site (and No I have no
affiliation with them):
http://www.sassepos.com/home.htm
If you want to develop something on your own, which it
sounds like I think, you will also probably need to
develop a touch-screen interface. Although I've worked
with these before I do not have a clue how they actually
work! I'm afraid I cannot much help in that area.
You could also search the web for POS database models. I'm
sure even people right in this newsgroup could help you
identify the necessary entities for the data model. Your
first step before doing anything else is to identify the
entities of the database and analyze what relationships
are needed. This should be done on paper away from the
computer so you don't get tied up with little details of
how the interface might look. You could also consider
paying a professional to help you in the beginning stages
(or any stages for that matter) while you "fill in the
blanks."
Best of luck to you in this project.
<shameless plug>
If by chance you're looking for an Access program to help
you with food service management tasks I may have just the
thing for you. I have a complete program that does the
following tasks:
1. Enter all your food and non-food purchases.
2. Enter inventory quantities and run calculations.
3. Keep track of all vendors and pertinent information.
4. Maintain a list of active and non-active products.
5. Maintain a list of all active and non-active employees
along with personal information.
6. Create termination forms for employees that leave.
7. Enter daily labor hours for everyone and have it
calculate hours/wages including any overtime.
8. Create your posted employee schedules right in the
program. Most of the time (from personal experience) the
weekly schedules are pretty much the same so I included
several options to copy schedule data from one
day/week/range into a new date range. Then you can just
make any minor adjustments. Making the next week schedule
can then be a quick task.
9. Appointment/Task manager. You can enter manager's
appointments/tasks/To-Do lists, etc. similar to Outlook.
This part has a TON of real SLICK reports.
10. Maintain a list of all personal contacts.
11. Create Manager Logs for recording important stuff only
managers should see.
<end shameless plug>
Bad Jeff!!!
