During normal operation, information is copied from a lane's database to the server database and vice versa. Some of these operations happen automatically. Others occur manually by default but can be scheduled to occur periodically.

Lane => Server Data

The lane sends transaction data to the server. At the end of a transaction, the tables dtransactions and alog are inserted into corresponding tables on the server. Upon successful transfer, the lane tables are truncated.

If the server is unavailable (e.g., network is down), the lane just keeps adding to dtransactions and alog until the server becomes available again. If bringing the server back online after a long outage, keep in mind that large transfers will be required to get all accumulated transactions. In extreme cases, the lane might stop responding for a couple minutes until the transfer query completes.

Server => Lane Data

Each lane maintains its own copy of the following server tables: products, custdata, employees, tenders, and departments. These tables contain items for sale, member accounts, cashier logins, payments accepted, and item categories (respectively). By default, copying these tables from the server to the lanes is manual. The Synchronize menu in Fannie provides options.

Employees, tenders, and deparmtents normally don't change often enough to merit any automated updates, but nightly tasks to reload products and custdata from the server may be a good idea. This should be scheduled after any other nightly tasks that manipulate products or custdata.

Note that Fannie tools for editing individual products and custdata accounts will push those changes to the lanes immediately. Updating a record or two is more efficient than reloading an entire table.

Lane => Server => Lane Data

For the sake of completeness, suspending and resuming transactions involves moving data in both directions. When suspending a transaction, the contents of localtemptrans on the lane are copied to suspended on the server. When resuming a transaction, appropriate records from suspended on the server are copied to localtemptrans on the lane. Both operations are always manual as the cashier has to input suspend or resume commands.