We
designed a POS solution to record sales and to provide meaningful
reports
Touch
'n' View
A
Scalable Framework and an Interface to Store and Query Transactions in
a Hospitality Enterprise
Caution:
Optional Reading Ahead
The
main benefit to you of ViewTouch flat files instead of a database for
storing and indexing data is that it increases "Data Availability" and
decreases "Cycle-Time", for maximum success. There's no need for
monthly data warehouse refreshing. This greatly increases data
"freshness" and your ability to make timely decisions. ViewTouch
directly accesses the file system without having to build the indexes
on the database. This
approach is simplest, and minimizes build and refresh times.
Flat
files already exist
Typically,
data feeding into a data warehouse or database is extracted from some
other system in the form of flat files, often
from a mainframe. If you don't have to load the information into a
database to ensure referential integrity of for some other reason, it
is possible to index it directly. ViewTouch has an integral
database search engine. Data cannot be deleted from flat
files but can be flagged as deleted, which serves the equivalent
function.
Less
build time and disk space
It
takes less time to build indexes from flat files than databases,
because you don't need to load the data from some other source into a
database. ViewTouch reads flat files directly, without incurring the
overhead of the database management
system itself. This decreases the "Cycle
Time" of loading data and
building or re-building the indexes, and increases the "Data
Availability" because the data
is more available for retrievals. In addition, it takes less disk space
to index flat files because ViewTouch stores
location pointers instead of row id's with the indexed values.
Quick
and easy to manipulate
Data
in flat files is very easy to manipulate for prototyping and changing
content, or in case a data type needs to be altered or the
size of a field/column changed. This is very useful for "exploration"
data warehouses, where recursive "design on the fly" and "very ad hoc"
query processing are essential.
No
temp space issues
When
indexing flat files, you need not worry about running out of temp
space, as you do with databases.
And you still gain the advantage of parallel processing because
ViewTouch
can build indexes concurrently across multiple servers even with flat
files.
No
special DBA
efforts
When
using
flat files instead of a
database, no special Database
Administration knowledge is required in order to create and load the
database.
No
DBMS license
required
When
using
flat files instead of a database, no licensing fee must be
paid.
Summary
Flat
files
are a simpler, easier,
faster way to store and
access data, if you don't require an actual DBMS for reasons other than
data access.
ViewTouch does NOT store transaction data in a relational
database management system
(RDBMS) based on the
relational model. Relational databases grow with every
transaction
until
they become VERY large. The larger they become, the more hardware it
takes to deal with them. As they grow they
slow down virtually every aspect of your PC's operation. Relational
databases are not easily consolidated. If another POS company stores
your data in a
relational database because the programmers don't know how else
they might store your data, then it may well be that the people who
implemented the relational database on that POS system don't really
know much about storing data, and it is likely that that business's
ability to actually derive any value from the data is severely
obstructed (and here's
why).
We store your transaction data in a format we designed
to make
it
quick & easy for you to learn WHAT you want about your
transactions
instead of burdening you with having to know HOW to query a database.
There is NO need for ViewTouch users to get get lost in the
complexities of Sequential Query Language (SQL) server software or
hardware, or to learn how to use SQL to try to make
use of the vast body of your organization's transactional data and to
manage your operation.
ViewTouch transaction
data is NOT handled by, managed with or queried by any third-party
database software. This data, YOUR data, is TOTALLY secure in this
regard. The advantages of avoiding third party software in a POS system
may not be obvious, so we'll mention this significant, but typical,
example of what invariably can and does happen when your POS vendor
relies on third
party software. A computer worm named the Microsoft SQL slammer worm
security vulnerability invaded systems which depended upon Microsoft's
SQL server.
On January 24, 2003, this worm caused a large Internet slowdown, the
largest malfunction in Internet functionality since the
infamous Morris worm of November 2, 1988.
We created ViewTouch
using third generation programming languages but
we also created a state of the art, natural-language, fourth
generation graphical query language which is built right into the
graphical touchscreen interface. We call it Touch 'n' View
and you can see it in each of the reports shown above. It's
sophisticated & powerful, but it's also intuitive &
easy to use. With it, you have the access you need to all of your
transaction data. Touch 'n' View makes SQL obsolete, really, and
provides
you with a much more modern, simpler, intuitive way to create
consistently meaningful reports from the
transaction records that your
business generates.
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