I had the pleasure to play with the iPhone this summer while at LinuxWorld San Francisco. As Steve Jobs usually says in his Macworld presentations: “it is breathtaking”. As of yet, I cannot purchase one because as you know, it is neither homologated nor active for European mobile networks. Although I couldn’t experience the device while it functioned working as a phone, what I experienced at the Apple store indicates that it is really an amazing product.

For me above all it apparently is:

1) A best in class benchmark in usability success stories (check the following video )

• Your feel as attracted to the design as with the iPods
• After 2 or 3 minutes of usage, you not only know how to use the device but also you experience incredible navigability features that are clear innovations in software applications. Features like zoom in zoom out, the capability to scroll up and down with inertia, the magnifier functionality that pops up when clicking a word with your finger to correct it...the list goes on.
• The applications which are included by default in the device are just very well thought out

2) A device that redefines the mobile internet experience and makes you truly believe in it

• The industry has been talking a lot about mobile data … I have not believed much in this industry (with the exception of the SMS), when experiencing the mobile data experience that other terminals would give you; but now wait until you experience the iPhone when…
• … web browsing with a wi-fi connection … amazing! … this is really web browsing and not what we have experienced in the past
• … experience other widgets like the Maps … you can easily find routes to places when traveling, …
• … weather … you can easily get the weather forecasts (definitively a killer up for my wife!)
• … Youtube … watch videos right away, and many more that make me think that this new iPhone really redefines how the mobile industry will evolve.

Overall, and obviously with a disclaimer since I still have not fully tried out the phone (things like the batteries,…), big kudos to the Usability and Engineering team at Apple. If anyone there is looking to join Openbravo, please send your resumes to careers@openbravo.com. We’ll be more than happy to talk to you! ;-)

Martin LaMonica writes an article about SugarCRM quoting John Roberts, SugarCRM’s CEO, who already talks about a potential IPO. John anticipates in this article that the company, which now has 125 employees, can grow to $100 million in yearly revenue in the next couple of years. It is incredible how fast Sugar is growing if you take into account that the company was started three years ago. I think this is great news not only for Sugar but also for other professional start-ups leveraging the open source and SaaS business opportunity like Openbravo. The more we succeed… the more open the world of software will become!

From here… best of luck to Sugar (for sure they will still need to overcome many challenges) and all these companies.

So, what do you do on a flight when your laptop battery goes out, you 've mistakenly jumped on a plane without personal tv's and the tall gentleman in front of you is blocking the view; oh and naturally it's late and you cannot read? Well I decided to draw my OB Internal Unofficial Yet Idealistic Mascot. What do you think of it's potential? Here was my thought process:


Use the Openbravo Name

• Try to use the "O," the "B," and the colors.
• Hands are up in the air and clapping signifying "bravo."

Think Opensource

• See what other's miss at first. Some people who see the drawing do not automatically get the fact that this is a small child. I also hear flower and grass which is also so cool.
• The head is an open "O."
• On the same note, keep the drawing open, the b, the o, the legs.

Gather Others Toward a New Feeling or Excitement:

• Have the child running or taking the next leap forward.

Create Simplicity

• The concept of a small child drawing a small child taking the leap forward.
• 4 strokes of the pen.

Please send all support by writing a comment here.

It is a great pleasure to post about our new Chief Products Officer at Openbravo: Paolo Juvara. Paolo is both a great professional and great individual, and I am proud he is part of the team. He joined us last Aug. 16th (see press release here) from Oracle, bringing a wealth of experience in diverse Product Engineering areas (from Financials to Business Intelligence, Manufacturing & Distribution, Supply Chain Management, and, for the past four years, CRM Service) and, having understood how open source is turning around the software industry, he joins with the right attitude to help us open the world of ERPs.

Some hours ago he has posted a message in one of our forums requesting your opinion about our product, feedback on our plans and desires for the future Openbravo. He joins with great ideas to inject in our roadmap that will obviously bring emotion in the sometimes too-burnt ERP world and I am confident that with your feedback they can only improve. Let's help him contributing with your suggestions here.

Thank you all!

We think that the database source management plans for Openbravo ERP will offer great enhancements to our community of users and developers. Database structure and data development is very complicated: you cannot develop a database the same way you do with java source code, you cannot use a version control system like CVS or Subversion to track the changes, and you cannot deploy the changes you made into a working database easily. For those reasons we are working to simplify the development and deployment of database changes.

Our main target is to get rid of the two database dumps we provide for Oracle and for PostgreSql in each version and to provide the structure and data of the database in several XML text files that define the sources of the Openbravo ERP database. These XML files must be database independent (they must be the same for Oracle and for PostgreSQL) and must create, when "imported" to an empty database, a working Openbravo ERP environment, in the same way that the current database dumps do.

This way, we will be able to manage database changes in a Subversion repository in the same way as the rest of the Openbravo ERP source files, because XML are, in fact, plain text files. With a Subversion repository, we will be able to integrate the development of new Openbravo ERP functionality in an standard process, commit all changes - including those done in the database - to the Subversion repository, create log changes based on commit comments, link a commit to a tracker entry, create nightly builds based on the last commits of a day, etc, etc...

As an additional benefit, if we have the database schema of two versions of Openbravo ERP described in XML format, with the right tool we can generate a SQL script that upgrades the schema from one version to the next. By that, I mean a SQL script with the appropriate DDL and DML statements (i.e. "ALTER TABLE ...", "INSERT ... ", "UPDATE ..." commands) that upgrade the database.

There are many issues related to database migration/versioning problems, but we do not need to solve them all; we just want to solve the major issue. The problem we are going to focus on is to include all the database changes we make from one version to another, and all the database changes our developers and users do when developing new Openbravo ERP functionality, when fixing bugs, and when customizing for customers... We will release documentation for developers about what this tool can do and what this tool cannot do, and methodology about how to implement the most common database changes a developer needs when developing Openbravo ERP functionality.

Once we are able to create database scripts that upgrade a database from one version to another, it will be easier to upgrade Openbravo ERP installations in production environments, everything at one time: sources and database. To create patches of Openbravo ERP functionality. And to keep a development environment updated with the latest commits from the Subversion repository of Openbravo ERP.

And now, what tool do we think is the best? We are using a tool by the Apache Software Foundation called DDLUtils: http://db.apache.org/ddlutils/ . This is the definition of DDLUtils taken from its home page: "DDLUtils is a small, easy-to-use component for working with Database Definition (DDL) files. These are XML files that contain the definition of a database schema, e.g. tables and columns. These files can be fed into DDLUtils via its Ant task or programmatically in order to create the corresponding database or alter it so that it corresponds to the DDL. Likewise, DDLUtils can generate a DDL file for an existing database.". Exactly the tool we need.

Since DDLUtils only supports tables and not altering data - it only works for the database schema - we are hacking this tool to include support for all the database objects included in an Openbravo ERP database: views, check constraints, procedures, functions, triggers and sequences. DDLUtils support a lot of database engines but we are only adding support of these database objects only for Oracle and PostgreSQL.

We are also adding support to merge data allowing insert, update and delete of data in the corresponding database. This will allow us to upgrade the metadata model of Openbravo ERP from one version to another: Tables, Windows, Reports, etc.

We made a lot of progress hacking DDLUtils and creating the sources XML text files and we expect to release a first preview of the database versioning project soon. We know that there will be a lot of problems and things to polish before the tool we are building becomes production quality, but we are confident that we will be done it in time and that this will be a great improvement for all the Openbravo community.

There is an open discussion of this topic in the following thread of the Openbravo forums: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1790871&forum_id=549512

Everybody is invited to participate.

Since April 2006, date in which Openbravo published its source code, our team has traveled to the US in more than 5 different occasions. The last one was some days ago when we participated for our second consecutive year in Linux World San Francisco and won an award.

This short post is to share with you what I love from the US and more specifically from Silicon Valley. So here I go with the list:

• I love the entrepreneurial culture and how entrepreneurs are recognized by society. Success is obviously positively recognized and failure is not perceived as disaster in the professional careers of those starting up new businesses
  
• I love the large concentration of entrepreneurs that exists and specially the large pool of skilled software professionals ready to jump ships to new start-ups. Synergies between the corporate world and the university and research community are much more efficient
• I love the attitude that successful entrepreneurs have to help others, their practical advise that often give you to help you grow your business into a market leader and overall the rhythm of conversations when you talk business with them
  
• I love organizations that are ready to work with start-up companies both providing services (adapting their offering) and becoming your clients (being more exposed to start-up risks)
• I love the large number of VCs ready to invest in new breakthrough ideas taking an active role in shaping them.

Conclusion: If you are an entrepreneur go charge your batteries from time to time with energy shots from the Valley. It is worthwhile!

So in the end, what will Round 2 LinuxWorld be remembered for? In addition to meeting some great representatives from companies in the Open Solutions Alliance, and talking to potential partners and end clients; quite simply I’ll remember LinuxWorld itself for three simple reasons:

1. Winning the LinuxWorld Product Excellence Award: Openbravo won the award for Best Integrated Solution! Winners in other categories included Hyperic and Enterprise DB.
2. Our product works with the Iphone? Well apparently yes! We were with an Iphone user and completed basic processes, looked at reports, etc. While it hasn’t been fully tested by our QA department, our 15 minute tryout showed that Openbravo worked with the standard web browser!
3. Signing up participants for our Miami Trainings: Basic Functional, Customization and Basic Development, and Advanced Development Training. For more information, please visit: Openbravo Scheduled Training.

However while giving demos, talking about the product, and meeting people was great; outside of the conference itself the most reflective viewpoint came in gauging where we were, are, and will be going.

Looking back to one year ago, I recall a 20 person company which was Openbravo for only 8 months and still defining an identity and structure; a product which had room for improvement in both usability and functionality; and a training department which was simply a good idea, but far from a reality.

What we have now is a 50+ person company (I took vacation last week and 2 new people were here today), almost 2 years old. We have a product with a new interface, new integrated functionalities, and with a JasperSoft tool making it much easier to advance product reporting. And finally, we our training boasts an online demo, elearning module, and live training sessions which have been in South America, United States, Europe, and Asia.

As for where we are going? The natural answer is simple: wait and see.