In my management software that I sell, I have for a long time entered the families and product categories, all of this now I will have to put in the programs that distribute free of charge. Obviously it will insert the same advanced features of the Vikings, rather I will try to create a new window with the possibility to change the categories or even better with a simple check list in which you can write down the value chosen.
Normally you would create a new table in the database with secondary indexes ranging to cross each other in order to have a tree structure, in this way it is possible to submit the categories and sub-categories, in practice many levels as you want. In this way I have created families and sub-families in Vikings. In Calus 2014 all this features would take me a lot of time and I do not want to spend it for a free management, so the only way to manage product categories remains to a new table with corresponding dialog management, as has been done to the unit measure, or in another way which surely will adopt. The method we implement it in Calus 2014 for managing categories of goods will be as simple as possible: a drop-down box editable directly in the management of the articles and when the tool detects a new value will place it in the list of choices. From the technical point of view it is a simple method to solve the problem, you just need a field in more text in the table and then do a simple select query to filter all values previously entered. There would only be a small problem compared to the Vikings and Minosse software will be much slower because the query will use a text field and an identification number, but at least the data load will always be fast enough.
I recommend to all users of Calus 2014 to follow the development of my management software, because in a few days will release a new version of the program, includes the insertion of the categories. Later in time we will see to include also the ability to filter data based on just these categories.