POSper Quick Start ================== Unzip the bundle into a directory.

Database setup ============== Decide which database you want to use: For testing, the java built-in HSQLDB will be used. For production, we strongly recommend to use a production grade DB like Postgesql or MySQL or others. Download the respective JAVA connector for the DB you want to use. The DB connector for MySQL is supplied with the bundle. The follwing instruction apply to HSQLDB/MySQL respectively. - Install MySQL 5.0 or higher on your local machine or a connected server. It's not a good idea to connect to a server outside your LAN because performance won't be sufficient for productive use. For remote administration of POSper performance is still fine. Remark: recent user reports are indicating that MySQL 5.5 runs into user permission problems. Until this is clarified you should better download 5.1. - It is recommended to install MySQL Tools to handle db administration tasks. - For DB's other than HSQLDB, create an empty database schema. - Take care to setup a user login with ALL access rights and a safe password, in MySQL e.g. grant all privileges on *.* to '<user>'@'%' identified by '<pw>'; POSper config ============= - Run config In Linux, make posper and config executable (chmod a+x) and run ./config. config detects and checks your Java runtime environment and starts the POSper config dialog. In Windows, run config.exe. In the database tab you'll find HSQLDB settings as default. If you use MySQL, configure the database connector to point to the mysql connector in the base directory and change the database name to the name you've chosen for your database scheme. Enter the database username and password you've chosen for posper use.

For other DB's configure the JAVA connector respectively. You can adapt any other settings to you need at any time. Choosing the Configuration menu in posper brings up this config dialog. Set register host to the same value as host. If register host is not set some of the reports won't work (register host defines the host that produced the transactions you want to be evaluated - Save your settings even if you didn't make any change! Config will create a file posper.properties in your home directory containing the configuration settings. Warning: running POSper from a different account will require to repeat the configuration process (or copy the posper.properties file). Having a properties file for each account allows to run POSper with different settings or even different DBs (e.g. one for learning and testing). - Serial and USB interface If you have configured any device to be connected through a serial or USB port, like printer and customer display, you need to install the Java RXTX library, e.g. librxtxSerial.so for Linux or rxtxSerial.dll for Windows. In this case choose mode 'rxtx'. Download RXTX 2.1.7 from http://rxtx.qbang.org. Other than mentioned in the RXTX install instructions the RXTX library can be placed in the POSper install directory which is the default java library path. This is a safe way to retain the RXTX library when you ugrade your Java version. The RXTXserial.jar file is already present in libs. If you choose 'serial' the Java Comm API is used. The Java Comm library libLinuxSerialParallel.so can be placed in the POSper install directory which is the default java library path. This is a safe way to retain the Comm library when you ugrade your Java version. The necessary jar file with javax.comm is already present in libs as well as the javax.comm.properties file which configures the names of the system specific ports. An adapted javax.comm.properties can also be placed in <JRE>/lib where it takes precedence. Unfortunately there seems to be no Windows driver library to support the Java Comm API. Sun/Oracle say on their Download Area: "Note: Sun no longer offer's the Windows platform binaries of javax.comm, however javax.comm 2.0.3 can be used for the Windows platform, by using it in conjunction with the Win32 implementation layer provided by the RxTx project.

To use that, download javax.comm for the 'generic' platform (which provides the front-end javax.comm API only, without platform specific back-end implementations bundled). Then acquire the Windows binary implementation rxtx-2.0.7pre1 from http://www.rxtx.org." www.rxtx.org no longer exists, so grab this version from http://rxtx.qbang.org. I havn't tested Java Comm on Windows so I can't tell if it works. When do I use 'rxtx' and when do I use 'serial'? Try rxtx first and 'serial' if you're facing problems with rxtx. This can be system and/or device specific. If you are a developer and want to compile POSper you might face problems downloading the javax.comm library. You can download the library from the Oracle site and include it in your local repository by hand - Run posper In Linux, run ./posper. If POSper won't start, run config to check your configuration. Additional configuration settings are available in the posper script. In Windows, run posper.exe. POSper will ask if you want to have a databse created and populated with sample data. Answer both questions with yes. When asked for a setup password, please enter 'setup'. This is just to avoid that POSper inadvertently overwrites an existind databas e. Database triggers ================= In order to automatically create a serial number for close cash reports and reference numbers for products and categories you can use the trigger definitions in mysqlTrigger.sql. There's also a procedure to create a serial number by month for payments created in the payments dialog. Obviously, all trigger definitions are designed to work in MySQL. For other DBs you might need to adapt the procedure. Enjoy working with POSper! Hans Artmann (C) arcarsys 2009 info@arcasys.de