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Getting Started - Example Setup

Wed, 03/04/2009 - 17:33 — AMSAdmin

Theatre Manager will operate on virtually on any platform that is is installed on. From Theatre Manager's original conception, it has been designed on the Macintosh and the PC platforms (simultaneously), while still enabling a single version of the source code, resulting in a true cross platform box office solution.

When purchasing a new desktop system, budgeting $450-$700 for a box office workstation has been a standard price for the past 5 years. For that price, you will get a great price/performance value including the monitor and everything else you need.

Examples that fall in this price range (as of July 2011):

  • PC: Intel® Xeon® Quad or i3 core, up to 16 gigs ram, XP Pro, or Windows 7 Pro, gigabit ethernet, up to 2000 GB SATA or 256 GB solid state drive
  • iMac Mini, 2.4 Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs ram, 320 GB HD, OSX Snow Leopard
  • Theatre Manager is better at higher screen resolutions (>1024x768 pixels). 23" wide screen LCD's are about $150-$200 and are perfect for the box office, allowing larger seating maps to be displayed making it easier for your patrons and staff to view the available seats during the sales process

If you are going to buy, check the consumer ratings for phone and web based computer vendors. In many instances, you can get some good deals on machines purchased this way.

Workstations

Web Listeners

 In most cases, a web listener should have the same machine specifications as a workstation. Often organizations install it on the main server, some make the web listener a standalone machine.

Ethernet

 The best performance today is Gigabit switched Ethernet network using cat 5 or cat 6 cable

You can use 10/100T networks if that is what is available.

Server

 Database server specifications (in order of importance) are:
  • Raid 1+0 or Raid 5 fast SATA drives. This reduces drive latency.
  • 4GBs of ram at a minimum. 8 GBs are recommended for larger installations.
  • A server (Mac or PC) with at two core 2 duo processors or more.
  • OS-X 10.5.x or later, linux, Win 2000 server or later, XP, or Win 7. Note that Postgres is 10-15% faster on unix flavours of the OS than windows flavours.
  • capable of running Postgres 8.4.4 or later
  • gigabit ethernet port.

Printers

 If your are purchasing a laser printer for general report printing, Theatre Manager works with both Mac or Windows Compatible printers. It is recommended, the printer be Post Script or PCL capable.

You may also want a specialized thermal ticket printer to connect to the server. This allows you to print tickets at the time of sale. Thermal printers performance is around 3600 tickets per hour (1 a second). These can be configured as ethernet, serial or parallel devices. If you want to share ticket printers, we recommend only using ticket printers with an ethernet port.

For large volume box office operations, we suggest one ticket printer per Box Office wicket. More printers provide emergency backup. Depending on your requirements, subscription or group sales can elect to have their own printer or share with box office printers. Depending on print volume (and walkups), sharing a ticket printer between one or more box office wickets is supported through an ethernet capable printer interface.

Database Size

 The amount of disk space is 100% dependent on the operation of the organization. Factors that involve the database size:
  • Is the Theatre to be set up as festival seating or reserve seating
  • The number of plays per year
  • The number of performances each play has per year
  • The number of patrons who are involved with the Theatre
  • The seating capacity of the Theatre(s)
  • The amount of Patron Ticket Purchase History kept on-line

At most installations, the databases are about 3 GB for a reserved seating 700 seat house with 80 performances/year and 20,000 patrons. Some larger examples are:

  • 347 seat Theatre; Reserved Seating; 10 Shows/year; 40 Performances/Show; 50,000 Patrons; 3 years of Ticket history; has a database of approx. 650 MB.
  • 400 seat Theatre; Festival Seating; 6 Shows/year; 14 Performances/Show; 12,000 Patrons; 1.5 years of Ticket history; has a database of approx. 150 MB
  • 2600 seat + 600 seat venue with 300,000 + tickets per year and 400,000 patrons - about 25 GB.

To start, allocate 10 GB of disk space for the live database and 1 GB for each backup image you will maintain online. Remember the Theatre Manager application resides on each individual workstation, and the only file kept on the file server is the database.
Hardware Management Policies To manage hardware requirements, often an organization will purchase one or two new machines each year. We suggest you buy mid range computing power for best price/performance ratio and install them in the box office. You can then migrate the box office machines around the organization. Doing this annually, you will have an effective hardware management policy and users will be happy as the computers can keep up to the new features introduced to the software.