Speaking of Accounting software . .
I just finished a 3-day dealer certification and training class for Vigilant's PoS (Point of Sale) and Distribution software. I have been long familiar with the DOS version (most PoS systems still run on DOS) and knew they were porting to Windows.
Here's the story. They've finally, after 7 years of programming around Windows deficiencies and bugs (some causes of seemingly random file corruption took three years to pin down), they've finally done a first release of the product. They recommend the product be deployed with caution and only in small stores.
The certification class was not, however, on the new Windows product.
In the mean time, they were having trouble with the multi-store polling system in the DOS version. It wasn't the system itself, similar to what is used in large store chains, but due to the small business customers. These customers didn't have IS staff that understood the polling process and they often screwed it up totally when a modem connection failed. Since polling was also secheduled for the Windows version, this was considered serious.
Marketing asked programming "what can we do".
Programming responded "Well, we can try running the DOS version over Linux with DOS emu and have the stores work from a central host". It was so decreed.
It worked, so it was next decreed to port to 32-bit native Linux. This was done in a matter of a few months.
But the customers said, "What if the host connection goes down? Aren't we out of business until it cames back up?" Weeeeeellll, yes, sort of.
So the remote workstations were also set up on Linux, and if the host connection goes down for more than 20 seconds, the workstation continues in "local mode" (even if you were in the middle of an invoice, that invoice is not lost). When the link comes back up for more than 20 seconds, a queued resync is performed. Cool.
The net result: the multi-store Linux product is now the flagship product. The painfully developed Windows product (an absolutely outstanding Windows product, by the way) has been relegated to "Mom & Pop store" status.
Vigilant runs on Caldera Linux 3.1x, since Red Hat's product was found messy, inconsistent and lacking some needed products in the distribution.
