Hello, John.
You can ddo it all on-line. Altough you are forced to do it in batch (disconnected users, unreliable network connections, etc), on line procesing is always better. That way you can get real time information from everywhere (sales, inventory, cash, etc).
The users you mention are not gonna require an expensive server, nor hog a standard 10BaseT network. Of course, all the power you can get would make the whole system better but this is not a stress situation.
I had many customer who run a high-volume of transactions simmultaneously on tens of PCs at real time without any major problem.
Hope this helps.
> I am developing a multi-user POS system using VFP database. Our design is to place the database in a hign end PC, all of the workstations will shared the table located in server.
> It need to update 4 tables for each transaction. Again, the are about 5-10 users will access to the server at this moment. However, will be grow very soon.
> Which is the better way to update the sales transaction, online or batch processing?
>
>Online : Connect to server database and TABLEUPDATE() immediately once the sales done.
>Batch : Update in local table, and process these local records at the end of the day to update the server datanase.
>
>I have think of some adv and disadv of both method.
>I would like to get your recommendation too!!
>
>Hope you can shared your experience with me :-)