Vista Cinema software solution TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

Hardware & Technical Information

Unlike many other cinema software systems, Vista does not force cinemas to use proprietary hardware or databases. When Vista was initially developed it was designed to run with an infrastructure that customers could get at the ‘local computer store'.

This is why the Vista Cinema system has been built around the Microsoft infrastructure. The software is programmed in Microsoft Visual Basic, the database is Microsoft SQL Server, and the applications are implemented on Microsoft Windows.

Compatible POS workstations include Partech, NCR, IBM, Javelin and standard Intel and Windows based personal computers with a touch screen. Vista’s kiosk application is compatible with a number of hardware devices including Partech, NCR, IBM, or custom-built kiosks. The recommended operating system for both is Windows XP Pro.

The Vista PDA product, MobilePOS, can run on Pocket PC or Windows CE.

Vista Point of Sale supports a wide range of card swipe devices, barcode readers, cash drawers and customer displays. Vista Point of Sale and Kiosk also support the OPOS retail standards as a popular way of communicating with different hardware devices.

Vista supports a wide range of ticket printers, including Practical Automation, Boca, Zebra Stripe, NCR, Epson, Star, IBM and many more. The layout for all tickets, receipts, vouchers and slips can be easily customised for each cinema. Additionally, tickets can be fanfold or continuous roll paper.

Vista is able to support a wide variety of fiscal devices and many different ticket number algorithms as required.

Secure

Vista offers a number of options to keep your cinemas up and running. Using RAID and hot swappable disks, if the cinema experiences a hard disk failure, then our customers are able to keep on selling while an engineer swaps out the faulty hard disk. Sites running Microsoft’s SQL Log Shipping are able to run 2 servers in parallel and if one fails, the system can cut over to the secondary server. Vista also offers the option of off-line sales at POS.

Benefits:

The Vista Technical Architecture provides many different benefits to cinema owners such as:

• Open Architecture
• Vista’s unique cabinets system for user defined data access.
• Open reporting system.
• Multi level security.
• Automated release upgrades.
• Customer controlled multi-language facilities.
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for many functions including:
• Vista Sales Server – enables 3rd party systems to interface with Vista.
• Vista Payments Module – provides a standard payment interface to all Vista modules.
• Vista Utilities Server – relays cinema information to the utility systems such as Signage, Air Conditioning and
• Projection Systems.
• Easy integration to other systems.