Restaurant Manager Reverse-Engineers Undocumented ERP, Maps 390 Tables Without Vendor Help

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A self-taught developer working as an operations manager at a restaurant in Itaúna, Minas Gerais, Brazil, spent months reverse-engineering TronSoft, a proprietary ERP system built on a Firebird database, entirely without vendor documentation. Needing to automate payment reconciliation, comanda closures, and fiscal document emission, he had no API references or schema diagrams to rely on. By systematically observing the live production database, he documented 390 tables, 514 foreign keys, and roughly 40 functional modules through trial, error, and inference alone. He overcame challenges including Firebird's non-standard SQL dialect, generator-based primary keys, and unpredictable transaction visibility before eventually moving from fragile UI automation to direct, reliable database writes. The experience highlighted how constraint and lack of resources can drive deeper technical understanding than conventional, well-documented development environments.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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