

Ask HN: Seeking open source grocery inventory database - quizbiz

I would be interested in building such a DB with others but I am asking because I am trying to start a grocery delivery business.
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thaumaturgy
There is none, that I'm aware of -- and I've worked with IT for a couple of
grocery markets.

Building such a database system will be trivial. They don't need anything
fancy.

HOWEVER: your big stumbling blocks will be integration with NCR and other
very, very proprietary hardware; and adoption. Once a store has a system in
place, they're very reluctant to mess with it, because the systems are fragile
and downtime can cost a lot of money in a hurry.

If you get curious about how to hack older NCR market systems, let me know.
Email's in my profile.

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hsmyers
At a guess, you won't see such a beast in the wild because unlike the rest of
a typical general ledger business package, inventories tend to be customized
for the particular customer. This before any effort to involve point of sale
hardware/software.

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karanbhangui
Closest thing i can think of is the Tesco API:
<http://www.programmableweb.com/api/tesco>

edit: also, keep in mind the story of Webvan:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan>

