1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

A Point-of-Sale System is the frontend of a retail shop or cafeteria. It is needed by large schools to keep track of cafeteria credits consumed.

A need for a computerized ticketing system for the boarding school was seen by the Office of the Dean of Student Finance of the Adventist University of the Philippines to free them of the expensive printing costs of paper meal tickets. [picture of old meal ticket]

The timing of the request for this system and the availability of technology to make it cheaply possible is important to the goal of the project. The author had been implementing thin client linux workstations both for production and laboratory/academic use. The Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) is the thin client technology to be used. The availability of the free user interface designer tool, Glade, and the free C/C++ compiler, GNU C Compiler, makes this project more realizable.

Since the project is critical to the operation of the Cafeteria, it was found suitable to add server hot redundancy to ensure high-availability and the Linux-HA Project was chosen for this.

Wireless Application Protocol, Short Messaging System, and Interactive Voice Response System technologies will help students inquire about their cafeteria account balance and expiry dates of cafeteria credits.

All the technologies to be used have been around for at least six months and are being used in production environments according to their respective websites.

The author will apply these technologies in this thesis-project to satisfy the operational requirements of the AUP Cafeteria.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

How can a Linux-based thin-client POS System solve the problems of the Adventist University of the Philippines Cafeteria in their use of paper meal tickets?

The manual paper meal tickets that the AUP Cafeteria uses has several problems:

• tickets get lost, washed, damaged all the time

• there has been an instance of fake meal tickets in the past

• waxing the tickets makes the markings erasable which means undue recovering of used credits

• checkers make errors in calculating and marking the tickets, overcharging and undercharging

• it is difficult to know ~3000 faces and names and therefore hard enforce non-transferability of meal tickets

• checkers take significant time calculating and marking the tickets therefore contributing to as long as 200-people queues

• the cost of printing meal tickets for two semesters was Php120,000

The yearly occurrence of the last item would be enough to justify the cost of a new computerized system. The author estimates the project to cost Php 120,000 which projects that the first year will be break even, and the project will enable the AUP Cafeteria to save as much as Php 120,000 for the consecutive years after the first year.

In addition to the above enumerated problems are other problems that are less specific for a ticketing system and more general for Point-Of-Sale Systems which are:

• unnecessary overspending for IT projects by most organizations and companies

• instability and embarrassing errors of some POS Systems (like in computer stores like PC Express and some banks whose ATMs use Windows XP/2000)

1.3 Statement of Objectives

1.3.1 General Objective

The project aims to design and implement a Linux-based Thin-Client POS System with Mobile Application and Interactive Voice Response System to solve the problems of the current manual paper meal tickets. The computerized cafeteria crediting system is to be completed before September 2004. It seeks to improve on operator accuracy and to lower operating costs ( < Php 24k/terminal) while having 95% system availability/reliability.

1.3.3 Specific Objectives

This project-thesis aims to:

• reduce or remove the possibilities of meal ticket fraud

• lower operator errors

• show more information about the client to make it easy to enforce non-transferability of cafeteria credits

• shorten transaction time

• take away paper ticket printing costs

• provide low-cost reliable ticketing/POS system

1.4 Scope and Limitation

The thesis-project focuses on the design and implementation of Linux-based thin-client POS system for the AUP Cafeteria.

The system makes use of the barcodes in the AUP Student ID. Other identification technologies are not tested because the installed base uses barcodes.

Only four terminals will be connected and tested with the system although it is possible to have more than twenty.

The system will cater for students and will not be used for cash and faculty charge transactions at this stage. Cafeteria credit for students are to be pre-paid and pre-loaded before using the cafeteria.

The SMS, WAP, and IVRS subsystems will provide only inquiry transaction to students. The SMS will be capable of 10 inquiries per minute. The WAP interface availability depends on the Cellular Carrier’s Internet Access policy and the university outgoing internet connection. The IVRS module will be capable of answering an inqiury every minute. A detailed listing of a student’s transaction will be available in a local intranet website.

The system is designed to handle an approximate of 5 items per meal, 3 meals per day, for 3000 boarders. A Server upgrade will be required when the requirement goes higher.

The operating system will be Linux for the POS terminals and the servers. The project recommends only intel processors and motherboards with a CPU minimum of a Pentium running at 100Mhz with 16MB RAM, a disk drive, mouse, and keyboard. The thin-client system strictly requires a fast and reliable network with at least 100 mbps bandwidth per 20 terminals.

The POS terminals should have a generic keyboard interface barcode laser reader, two 9” VGA Monitors that can display 640x480 resolution and a vertical 70 hz and horizontal 38 hz sync. A mouse and a keyboard is also needed.

1.5 Significance of the Study

The study attempted to explore the possibility of a Linux based Thin-Clent POS System with SMS, WAP, and IVRS inquiry systems. It aims to design and implement the system, applications, network, and the hardware setup required.

The project will primarily practically benefit the AUP Cafeteria in the removal of meal ticket printing cost.

Companies may also make good use this study to explore the possibility of making their own POS with lower TCO.

In addition the study benefits students studying Operating Systems, TCP/IP Computer Networks, Configuring and Compiliping Linux, C Programming, X-Windows Graphical System, Distributed PostgreSQL Databases, and Server Clusters / High-Availability technologies.