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thanks maxx, more tech to familiarize myself with. The good part is that I'll bet I can find people who can write this stuff. Ever try to find a FORTRAN programmer?
Note: I know some of you are out there 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Hi,
You pretty much nailed down the core technology set. Following is just some design consideration and best-practices. As a general rule, try to minimize technology surface as much as possible. Pertinent to your case it seems that the following technology set may suffice the goal;
1.1. Backend DB - Sql Server Compact Edition 4.0 (single-file based DB: easy to deploy/backup/distribute)
1.2. Business Layer - C# 4.0 (Client Profile redistributable)
1.3. Front End - WPF/XAML (.NET 4.0, the same Client Profile redistributable)
1.4. Optionally - implement data export to Excel feature for 'ad-hoc' reporting/analysis
As for sample practical implementation of the aforementioned technologies, you can refer to my recently released app PaydayNY-2014 for Win 7/8 to see how it works in real life (there is a free Trial edition) PaydayNY-2014P-Pro-for-Win[^]
Best regards/wishes,
<lol>Life is 2short 2remove USB safely
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Html5/JS or one of the frameworks that make it easier to develop browser based UI. Aside from cross platform cross device advantage current Microsoft UI solutions can have limited support in the future or be deprecated since Microsoft is in transition now with no clear future direction for old UI stack. You may also check other DB solutions more modern than SQL if they are more suited to solve your problem (along the lines of document DB (Mongo, Hadoop etc.) and not relational DB).
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First of all I would approach the "conundrum" of designing a UI that is "flexible" by interviewing in-depth the significant end-users of the current system. I'd listen most carefully to their descriptions of what's easy to use, and what's tricky to use, and what's damn difficult to use with the current system. I'd ask them for their ideas, doing my best to "set them at ease" ... by building trust ... so they could come up with anything they imagined and express it. I'd do the same thing with the managers of the front-line users.
I would then create sketches incorporating the end-user/manager feedback, ideas, and my own inspirations; I'd go back and show those sketches to the same folks I interviews and study their reactions.
After #n iterations of the design process, I would then attempt to formalize the specifications, and constraints, on the UI, taking into account hardware, software, security, and "organizational culture."
It may be obvious, but let me say it anyway: by involving others in the design phase you both build "mind-share" and positive expectations that may make acceptance of your final design easier, but you also off-load the risk of coming up with something that's a total surprise to the end-users, and which they may have real trouble accepting.
Only then, would I evaluate whether to use WinForms, WPF, or the Web Stack, to implement the UI, based on criteria I'd developed in the design phase: need for scaling while preserving look-and-feel across any range of sizes (I'd go with WPF for that); need for whiz-bang graphic effects and animation (again, WPF).
All this should not constrain your creative imagination: if you come up with a powerful "vision" of a radical new design that might have a steep learning-curve for current users. Well, so then you have a sales job to do with both end-users and their managers. I would certainly not start that sales job until I had a smoothly working prototype, and estimation of training costs, and eventual benefits of adoption.
If the various musings above are not relevant at all to your context ... sorry 
« I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief » Immanuel Kant
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You suggestion is just perfect in an ideal world...Once I had the opportunity to build some software from ground-up and went to do the interviews...
After 10 weeks (and it was within time-frame) I had a UI design confirmed by all relevant person - at the next week they announced bankruptcy...
I never ever since then had the opportunity to do the same...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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While I am addicted to imagining I am free of constraints, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary ... in this case I would assert that the method you pursued ... interviewing, design phase iteration ... like the method I advocate ...
Is "real world" !
What is "ideal world" is for a programmer/designer to ignore existing "context" ... current software and its users and managers, company culture, existing hardware capabilities, learning curve for new software, etc., ... and imagine they have a tabula rasa (blank slate) on which they can create any damn thing they imagine.
Do you really think your 10 weeks of design-phase was a cause of the company's bankruptcy ?
« I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief » Immanuel Kant
modified 28-Sep-14 5:25am.
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Love the way he jumps straight to various Windoze technologies. Yeah. Love that.
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Bill,
A good point, but what they don't know is that they really need to replace this system. As I'm wrapping up some very late changes for them, partly because of how old this system is, partly because of my mgt. skills, this is somewhat of a ninja project.
If I can get a system basically running without too much public involvement, then I'm halfway home. True, I may toss it all in the bin, but I have the hooks into the people that really matter - the end users. It's interesting. The mgt. team has tried to force feed a new system into the factory and production process, and it failed miserably for the exact reasons you mention - they failed to ask the end users what they need.
At the end of the day, I'll have learned a lot of tech.
cg
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Be very careful with the interviews. You will get scope creep and then everyone will be expecting something different.
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Before you make any decisions, you should read what Joel says[^] about rewriting software.
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What an excellent point... I need to go get some coffee and ponder this....
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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That said, there are perfectly valid reasons to start over from scratch.
For example, if the legacy code is done in lisp.
Anyway, depending on all those thing I don't know about your project, I would probably refactor the code into logical modules/ layers that can be easier exchanged or expanded to newer technologies, when needed, one by one.
So start with planning the architecture you want, and then how to get there.
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I cannot count the number of times I have linked to that article in the past 10 years. This was pure gold advice !
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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I wish I could have linked to it four years ago, it could have saved us a death march. 
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We need more requirements.
- Will it be accessed remotely?
- Will it be accessed from multiple devices?
If so then some or all should be written as web services. Maybe a client app that uses backend web services, maybe a web application that uses and exposes web services.
- What sort of budget do you have?
SQL Server's good. For some stuff. It's expensive too. Have you thought about MariaDB (open source fork of MySQL) or MongoDB? What about Redis for caching?
- Who will be working on it with you? What skillsets do they have?
If it's just you then you can use all the crazy tech you want. If you need to be able to have a team backing it then don't make the specs such that finding a dev or devs who can actually work within the 50 technologies you use is impossible. C#, Javascript, PHP, SQL - all bread-and-butter technologies that are easy to hire for. Start getting crazy and you'll have to either hire specialists or invest in training up staff.
- If it's a pure client-app then what OS?
Windows Devs are cheap. MacOS devs may not be.
- on what infrastructure will it be installed? PC? Servers? Cloud?
All I'd say here is: don't limit yourself to the PC. At least allow reports to be viewed on a tablet or phone so those on call can be on call in comfort. If you can provide basic functions (like "Stop the robots!") then that's a bonus.
However, the big one for me is "manufacturing system". Will it be taking orders from online systems? Will it, itself, be talking to other systems to get specs, data, machine statuses? The Internet of Things is everywhere, especially in manufacturing. Even touching on this to understand how it may affect the system you're writing will give you a headstart into the next 10 years.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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SQL Server doesn't have to be expensive; it depends on the application. I've added data base integration to a number of applications over the last couple of years, and the 'Express' versions of SQL Server work just fine. If you can live within the Express limits, you're good to go.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I am in a similar situation, where I have been asked to replace the back-end system for a company that is over 10 years old.
One consideration - the company you are developing this for will have over 40 years worth of data. Do they need to keep all that data live? Or can some of it be archived?
The company I am doing the re-design for is a regional restaurant chain, and their system tracks all of the sales in all locations, right down to the individual purchases made on a daily basis. So after 10 years there is a lot of legacy data that is no longer used, but still hangs around in their database, taking up a lot of space.
On of the things I am putting into place is a data archiving strategy so that only the data for the last 3-5 years is kept live, but with the older data made available if necessary.
Andreas
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Andreas Mertens wrote: On of the things I am putting into place is a data archiving strategy so that only the data for the last 3-5 years is kept live, but with the older data made available if necessary.
That is definitely a good idea!
I had developed a data intensive statistic package which gathered its data from an enterprise search solution on a per query basis and found that it is also a good thing to separately store aggregates in tables on an hourly, daily, monthly and yearly basis. That makes it very speedy in creating reports.
Cheers!
"I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability!"
Ron White, Comedian
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"I'm developing a proposal to replace a 40 yo manufacturing system with newer technology"
Many of you have made excellent suggestions and points, but the architects in the group have caused me to make a tactical retreat. Being a long time developer, it's natural for me to want to play with all of the latest software tech. Example: I bought SyncFusion's control set two years ago, and I want to use it , so I'm looking for an excuse. So, the "oooo, shiney" moment has passed - back to reality.
Here's the deal - back in the late 70's this manufacturing system was designed by people that really didn't write code for a living. We're talking a couple of 100K lines of FORTRAN, no design documentation, and the developers are long gone - retired, senile or dead.
Ten years ago, I was pulled in to try and move it to a PC - they actually had missing source code. But we found most of that in a guy's garage. Anyway, since then, I've been tweaking here and there and slowly unraveling the system, peeling away the layers of the onion. In that time, it's become clear to me we're dealing with a relatively simple system - but one with changes to support different customers, bug fixes, etc. This is a nod to the Joel article. He makes some valid points, but I have 200K lines of FORTRAN that simply need to go...
From a business perspective, the original company has been acquired, and there is an opportunity to update this system with something that will actually integrate into the new business IT environment. As a minimum, it gives me an excuse to play with new tech. I might even screw up and convince them to pay me.
The system invests a lot of code to:
- User Interface: data entry, range checking. A few good controls could handle this easily.
- Database operations: these are flat files. Processing queries the flat files and generates even more flat files. Moving the data into a database would further reduce code complexity an order of magnitude.
- Report generation: I have 1000s of lines of code that generate maybe 8 basic reports. More simplification.
- Machine file generation: this is the magic code that creates files to send to their equipment.
My driving goal is to break up this monolithic application and move it into the 21st century as a properly architected 3-tier architecture. The UI doesn't depend on the flat files, the database is independent of other sections of the code, etc. This gives me the flexibility to easily add new features in an affordable manner and more importantly, QUICKLY. Their business is growing, and the system is holding them back.
To address Chris' comments:
- Access: mainly via desktop PCs. But the future beckons, so I'm already thinking of BE FLEXIBLE in the UI. Multiple devices for sure. A key limitation of the existing system is record locking. You cannot have two people working on the same order.
- Budget: strictly ninja (my own dime) at this point. My goal is to learn new stuff. The end of the rainbow is to win the project for development.
- Databases: anything is better than a flat file. I'm not anal about Sql Server, MySQL - any flavor - would get the job done.
- Help: I would do the initial layout. The hard part is taking a dozen years of playing with the existing system and condensing it to items I could farm out. And if I were to win mgt.'s approval, I would be breaking out the work.
- OS: Windows. It's the corporate standard.
- Infrastructure: if I said cloud their eyes would glaze over. If I had to guess, they would give me a server on their network.
- Limitations: I agree, that's why I asked the experts. Being able to pull up a production report is gold for dog and pony shows. And dog and pony shows sell things.
- Manufacturing system: there is a goal to do just that. But they are stuck. The current system, although clunky, is incredibly efficient at what it does. The problem is that it is very difficult to integrate it into their new corporate process - the one group I work with just went multinational through acquisition. So, they have all of this new mgt to make happy. Being able to support new interfaces would be a key seller.
I'm thinking long term here, and if I position the design correctly, the sky is the limit. What I really want is the support contract.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Ah you are doing this as a consultant, good luck, if you get the build you should be able to get the support contract if you don't screw it up  . It sounds like a fantastic opportunity and should set up a small company for some time. I REALLY hope like hell management don't get steam rolled by a big player. All the luck in the world to you!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Appreciate the thoughts. It might completely flop. It's fascinating the politics of this industry.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: It's fascinating the politics of this industry
Fascinating is NOT a word I would have used. I did that sort of work in the 90's, not a way to live a stress free life (I had a growing family at the time) but it was never boring. The support resources back then were rather sparse.
I hated the bus discussion!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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charlieg wrote: I might even screw up and convince them to pay me.
Uh-oh ! I wouldn't touch a line of code without a contract, and regular pay-days.
cheers, Bill
« I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief » Immanuel Kant
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topic: "what technology would you select for the UI?"
The entire discussion has blown up in an elegant and useful way. I'm knocking around ideas at the point. Last night, I deleted the UI completely from the ideas I'm knocking around. I'm so late on the current project (some work related, some personal issues that could not be avoided) they might laugh me out of the building. But they know they have a problem with the current system.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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