Beginner questions

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I am almost embarased to ask these questions, but after reading other posts I am not alone. I spend the last three days browsing the oracle and oracle partner web sites. I am now more confused!

This is a summary of the porject that I need to implement: Craete a retail store management software package. This will include Point of Sale, Inventory Control, Mailling List management, Customer Discounts, Purchasing, Accounts Recievable, Price Sticker Generation, Cash Drwarer Reconsilliation, Multiple Location Support, etc, etc.

We want to use a browser as the client end of the interface or some other thin client capaly technology that will allow both Internet and LAN implementation. An important note is that we will need to be able to print invoices, statments, etc to a printer that is in the store (although the server may be elsewere).

We want the application to be server OS independent. Current targets are: Windows 98 (small stores with 1 to 3 users), Windows 2000 (Medium stores with 4-15 users), Soloris (Larger stores, multiple stores, etc).

We need to develope this code very QUICK. We currently have a SCO UnixWare based product that is described at
http://www.keycomp.net/keycomp/solcomp.htm Our first milestone is to develop the Point of Sale, Inventory Control, and some reports. We have for developers with C expierance.

With that background, here are my questions: Is Oracle a viable choice? (I am also looking into Microsoft's dotNet product)
How helpfull will Oracle's RAD product be? What type of training will my develpers need? How long will this traing take?
Is there a place I can go (North East US) to see this type of development and ask uninformed questions?

In the area of pricing I understand the following. We pay $1,995 to become a partner.
Because the user will never have direct database access (Applictaion Specific) we will get a 60% discount off the price for the server. Annual support will be 19% of the discounted price. Singe server implementations are $160/user Mulitple server implementations are $200/user Implementations in which the user count is unknown the cost is 15 * CPU COUNT times CPU SPEED.
(if RISC the result is multiplied by 1.5)

Therefore a 3 user store would cost (3 * 160) * .4 = $192 and annual support is $36.48
Is that correct? It seems very inexpensive.

Therefore a 1,000 MHz single processor server with unkonwn user count would cost

    (1000 * 1 * 15) * .4 = $6,000 and annual support of $1,140 Is that correct? It seems very expesive.

Sorry for the length, but I have not been able to get a straight answer from Oracle staff. They all tell me that after I spend the $1995 they can answer my questions. I had to beg for the pricing information. Somehow, that just does not seem right.

Mark Casazza

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