Creating custom order system

Question

The question i have is many fold.

So I work IT for this company. It’s a small company. Very small. They have an ancient ordering system that uses MSACCESS and was built in Visual Basic. I’ve been tasked with developing a new ordering system that processes orders as well as take in orders online.

I’ve created an order form in Excel with all the proper calculations that need to be made as sort of a foundation. I’ve found a service called SpreadsheetConverter that converts it to HTML or if I’d like Node.JS. But to be completely honest I have no idea what to do with Node.JS. I have some knowledge of VB and i’m (sort of) starting to understand databases.

My question is where would the best place to start if I wanted to build an application that can take in orders, store/retrieve customer data (autofill?), store order information into a database so i can retrieve them. The order system has to customly tailored to this company, they make Doors, so the calculations deal a lot with sizes and styles.

I have all the calculations i need. Basically where should i start if I want to build a UI, write simple code, and have it interact with a database. I’ve checked out Xojo, I have a Mac so i cant use Visual Basic. Where should i look to start a database?

Or is it possible to connect the Node.JS that spreadsheetconverter creates and connect it to something like Firebase?

I’m sorry if this all seems confusing, I basically don’t know where to start and a push in the right direction is all i need so i can narrow my focus.

Answer 1

Xojo might indeed be a good start for this.

Xojo includes access to a sqlite database, and you can add new records rather easily. You do need to know how to design and query an SQL db, though.

The biggest question is probably how to implement the user interface. This will be the biggest task. With Xojo, you can design it fairly easily, using its window layout editor.

Then you can either develop a monolithic desktop app, i.a. a Mac or Windows app that runs and maintains its database all on the same, single, computer. Or, if you want to allow multiple users access the database from different computers, consider writing a Web application in Xojo, which will be used through a web browser then. Most code will be the same, but testing will be a bit more complex and slower for a Web app, probably.

You would have to re-implement all your calculations in Xojo, though, as Xojo has no way to use or import Excel sheets this way.

Also, have a look at FileMaker. I have never used it but it may fit your needs.