I've been a software developer for over 20 years. A friend of mine runs  RMS and POS and asked me if I could develop an add-in that is specifically designed for his store needs. He has looked at available add-ins and can not find one that does exactly what he requires.

I have extensive experience using .NET and was wondering if it could be used to develop add-ins. If not .NET, what does exist?  Basically,  I'm looking for some type of information/documentation to get me started developing an add-in.

Any feedback woud be greatly appreciated!

Hi Nappy,

RMS is a very special beast. It is a pure COM application. There are different types of custmizations for RMS, each using different set of technologies. I.e. forms and receipts use some pseudo-XML language with a number of variables available to be used in them. Active Reports have some interesting features and allow to create comprehensive ad-hoc reporting using SQL statement and formatted with some sort of a markup language pretty easy, but fall short of providing some advanced functionality found in other reporting systems.

RMS add-ons (specifcally, POS add-ons) can be written in .NET as long as they expose COM interface to interact with RMS POS objects, such as Session, Transaction etc.

There's an SDK available for programming RMS, but franklyly speaking, Microsoft reserves it for certified RMS Partners. I don't know, if your friend has RMS Service Plan, you may try to request the SDK from Microsoft Support.The functionality in SDK is pretty limited that's why we ended up building our own .NET framework around it to facilitate speedy development.

What functionailty your friend is looking for? Maybe, we know about such an addon, or have similar things in future development plans... Please write to mixer@retalhero.com if you want to discuss more.

You can get some info from JeanHolland group about events, commands.

The two files you need to reference are QSrules.dll and QSbridge.dll.

You can build command buttons in POS to fire events or programs. The folks at SMS who wrote QuickSell (now RMS) made it very customizable.

You'll need SQL knowlage for sure, XML and either VB or Java can be used. As stated RMS is pure COM so stay away from VS 2005 for development unless you want to deal with wrappers for .NET

If you study the forms from the above site you'll have all you need to dispose of the RMS front-end program completely if desired.

Almost forgot you can get the OPOS info from Curtiss Monroe's site for the hardware devices. www.monroecs.com RMS currently uses OPOS 1.5 but they're backward compatable. (no version that I know of took away any features, commands) RMS only supports 8 of the 26 device types that the current version supports.

There's supposed to be a .NET re-write with ver. 3.0 RMS but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to come out. By the time it's released MS will have moved on to some other damn fool thing and all but abandon it like OLE and now COM, DCOM will likely get scrapped as well. (Hey it's almost 4 yrs old now!)

Couple ideas here.

You shouldn't really directly reference QSRules.dll and QSBridge.dll for if you do it then your add-ons will work only with that specific version of RMS and no other (i.e., if you referenced those .dlls for RMS1.3, your add-on will not work with RMS 1.3 Refresh 1, or any SPs added, or any previous or later version). Therefore it is much better to use late binding and declare your Session and other variables as Object.

Secondly, there's no problem with using VS2003 or 2005 (i.e. .NET 1.1 or 2 or 3) - as long as I said your add-on exposes a COM interface. It is a bit cumbersome to do in C#, as well as to use late binding. However, VB.NET works perfectly and to make a COM wrapper for you app you only need to check a checkbox in the settings for your project.

Though our preference still lies with C#, after some researching and testing we have standardized in building all auxiliary classes in C# while having specifically POS functionility written in VB.NET - this way we can keep the level of damage (to our brains, by using VB.NET) minimal.

While QSrules has been updated it doesn't appear to be anything other than SQL script changes since the program has no new functionality from the original QSC program.

QSbridge is still 1.0 SMS tagged.

Personally I hope MS leaves it alone as even when they do minor changes they end up with 3 SP's to undo the damage.

With the current lisensing model many folks are not adapting 2.0 (like me). So I have to admit forward compatibility is not a big priority with me.

I figure I got another four years before I jump ship to UNIX anyway.

Andrew,  Would you be able to send me your sample solution also?

Email: drellim47@yahoo.com

Hello Andrew,

If it is not to much trouble for you, please send me also sample code and the SDK help file.

Thank you.

JZavel@cs.com