Planet Openbravo

Gil Forcada: Categories

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Forcada) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:15:09 +0000

Our wiki is improving as days goes by.

If some days ago I talked about the new hierarchies system today is for categories.

Some months ago Jordi made a proposition a new category layout for our wiki and now I'm really excited to come here and say that it's already done!

What means for users? Basically that it will be a lot easier to browse inside the categories, Openbravo POS is a full citizen of our wiki with its owns categories and that this is the ground for keeping up with all new articles that are created daily.

The full category hierarchy can be seen in the wiki administration article (or interactively in the category tree article). We are satisfied with the new category system, but don't hesitate to send recommendations, there's always space for improvements.

Thanks for reading!

Paolo Juvara: Got ideas? Help us drive the future directions of Openbravo ERP

noreply@blogger.com (Paolo Juvara) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:57:44 +0000

As we are putting the finishing touches on Openbravo ERP 2.50 and we are preparing for its beta release, it is already time to start thinking about the next release.

I am writing this blog post today to announce the availability of the Openbravo Ideas page.

Like we did last year when we started planning 2.50, we would like our Community to help us prioritize the feature candidates and fine tune our development road map. Better than last year, when we used an on line spreadsheet, this year we have streamlined our processes and adopted the marvels of web 2.0 by creating an Openbravo page on User Voice (this was actually a Community suggestion from last year).

All of our most significant feature requests have been exported from the Openbravo Issue Tracker and loaded in User Voice with some default votes that reflect their priorities as we currently understand them.

You may now visit our ideas page and either vote for one of the existing entries or create a new one.
Each user is allowed ten votes and you can vote for ten different entries, assign all your ten votes to an existing entry, or anything in between.

You may vote either anonymously or after login. It would be great if you could login before voting so that we can notify you when we start implementing your preferred idea and involve you in the design and feature reviews.

I look forward to your votes!

Gil Forcada: Hierarchies

noreply@blogger.com (Gil Forcada) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:07:36 +0000

Hi all!

A new feature has landed in Openbravo's wiki: Hierarchic content.

With this new feature one should be able to navigate wiki articles like if it was a single article but split with several articles.

A nice index will be shown in the articles top-right:

Also at the end of the articles there will be a couple of links to the next and previous articles.

As always, the Help article has been updated to show how to use it.

You can already see it in action in the Modularity Videos.

Adrián Romero: My Openbravo Community Awards nomination

noreply@blogger.com (Adrián Romero) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:09:19 +0000

One of the important keys of the success of Openbravo ERP and POS are the members of the community. This year, during the Openbravo World Conference we want to honor the most important members of the community. I nominated the following persons and organizations.

Ronny G (ronny_g). Ronny is very active reporting issues and testing every new commit in the development branch of Openbravo POS. He is also an important participant in the forums and author of several documents in the wiki.
Jim (jbablittle). Jim is one of the most active persons in the Openbravo POS forums, friendly, and always giving detailed answers to people looking for help.
Mohammad Jaffar. For its translation of Openbravo POS to the Arabic language. The Arabic translation package of Openbravo POS is one of the most downloaded of the packages available for Openbravo POS.
Amorebieta-Etxanoko Udala. For the translation of Openbravo POS to the Euskara language.
Open Sistemas. For its contribution to the Openbravo POS source code adding functionalities oriented for the fast-food segment and for the largest implementation of Openbravo POS in Bocatta.

Please do not forget to nominate yourself or your favorites candidates to give the appropriate recognition to the most important people in the Openbravo community.

Paolo Juvara: My nominations for the Openbravo Community Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Paolo Juvara) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:46:58 +0000

This year, during the Openbravo World Conference, Openbravo will recognize some of its most outstanding community members as part of the Community Awards program.

The nomination phase of the awards is now open and I nominated the following individuals.

Best Quality Assurance (Individual): Naveen Chanda
Naveen has been a strong participant in the 2.40 alpha and 2.35 MP4 testing cycles, helping us proving those releases in a number of platforms.
He reported 8 defects, all of which were confirmed.
Best Quality Assurance (Individual): Paulo Leandro
Paulo has been a strong participant in the 2.35 MP1, 2.40 alpha and 2.35 MP4 testing cycles, helping us proving those releases in a number of platforms and validate the functionality, in particular in the Sales area.
Best Localizer (Individual): Kenzo Repole
Kenzo is the localization leader for Saudi Arabia. Besides working on the Arabic translation, Kenzo has been instrumental in developing support for right to left languages and contributing it to Openbravo.
This important capability became part of core Openbravo ERP as of release 2.50.
Best developer (Individual): Ville Lindfors
Ville has been involved with Openbravo for many years now and has contributed countless commits to our core code line, both in terms of defect fixes as well as improvements, with particular emphasis to security and performance.
Ville is also a continuous source of feedback and ideas on how to improve our product.
Best localization (organization): CBT Open
CBT Open made a very significant contribution to Openbravo in release 2.40 by developing, as part of the Italian localization, the withholding tax functionality.
In addition, CBT Open, as Italian localization leader, worked with other Italian community members and Kelyon in particular to improve the Italian translation.
Best localization (organization): Kelyon
Kelyon has been a very active contributor to the Italian translation in particular and the Italian localization in general. Their work in the translation pioneered the processes of collaborative translation and their work has been seminal in the refinement of tools such as Openbravo2PO and the POMerge functionality.
The collaboration between CBT Open and Kelyon is a model that we would like to see repeated in many other geographies.

Please remember to nominate your own candidate and help us creating a vibrant community were active members willing to contribute get the recognition they deserve.

Jordi Mas: My Openbravo Community Awards nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:01:38 +0000

As you know already know we are running the Openbravo Community Awards organized and sponsored by Openbravo to honor individuals and companies for their outstanding contributions to the Openbravo ERP and POS projects.

The nomination period is open. Please nominate the people in the Openbravo Community that have made a difference to you.

I have nominated many people. However, I want to highlight some people and organizations that under my opinion (subjective obviously) made important contributions:

Jens Wilke, for his work on Openbravo2PO and the initial German translation and chart of accounts. Jens' work on Openbravo2PO set the ground of our a tool that is part of our translator's toolset today. On top of that, we did the first translation of Openbravo to German, identifying issues that after clean the path to other folks.
Enric Alegre. He has been one of the strongest supporters in the Openbravo forums with 165 forums messages during 2008. Thanks for helping everyone to succeed in Openbravo community. He also is cooperating with the local government as part of our academia program to introduce Openbravo to students.
Victor Gaspar for starting the idea and contribute some of the Code Snippets, pieces of code that you can reuse in different places.
The Software Engineering Research Center in Pakistan is one of our members of the Openbravo academia program. They are teaching Openbravo there, contributing to Core with bug fixes and working regularly with the development community. A good example of how the academia world and open source software can work very well.
Mancomun.org, an initiative from the government of Galicia to promote free software. They have localized Openbravo ERP (partially) and Openbravo POS to Galician language.

Remember to nominate your our candidates and make your opinion count.

Adrián Romero: Openbravo POS 2.30 beta released

noreply@blogger.com (Adrián Romero) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:31:11 +0000

Finally Openbravo POS 2.30 beta has been released. It has been a long way to achieve this moment but it is worth the effort. You can download it from Sourceforge.net, and read the release notes in our wiki.

There are a lot of new functionalities and bugs fixed I want to summarize here:

PDA Restaurant Module: This feature will allow users to take orders, browse products and manage tables using a mobile device. In this version Opera Mobile and iPod touch / iPhone are supported, but with simple modifications any mobile device with web browsing capabilities and wifi connectivity will work. This feature is oriented for restaurants and other hospitality business.
Product Attributes: This feature has been created using the same concepts for product attributes in Openbravo ERP. With this new feature products can have attributes like size, color, serial number, etc. All these attributes are registered in all the operations like sales and inventory movements. New master data panels, reports and dialogs have been added to Openbravo POS to manage properly product attributes. This feature will be very useful for lots of sectors.
ERP - POS Improvement of Synchronization: The whole architecture for synchronization between Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS has changed and more data is synchronized. In the ERP side a new module has been added to provide REST web services for the integration. The tool selected to run synchronization jobs is Pentaho data integration. Pentaho data integration is an open source, powerful, metadata-driven ETL, with a graphical interface to design synchronization jobs. With this new architecture the synchronization logic is decoupled from the data, it will be easier to schedule synchronization jobs, design and create new synchronization jobs between Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS and other applications.
Payment Gateways: The payment gateways functionality has been improved and extended. Now we support natively the following payment gateways: PayPoint / SecPay, Authorize.net, Cyberauthorize, First Data / LinkPoint / YourPay and PaymentsGateway.net, and more payment gateways can be added easily. With these improvements Openbravo POS is able to manage card present transactions and is prepared to support EMV standards, PCI standards, and Chip/PIN requirements.
Bitrock Installers: Install Openbravo POS is now easier than ever. Now we provide installers for the following platforms: Windows, Linux x86, Linux x64, Linux ia64, OSX and Solaris Intel. The classical binary and sources packages are still distributed.
Support for the Apache Derby database engine: Apache Derby is an open source relational database implemented entirely in Java. Apache Derby improves the performance and reliability of Openbravo POS when running in embedded mode. And also Apache Derby in embedded mode replaces HSQLDB as the default database engine in the binary distribution of Openbravo POS 2.30. HSQLDB continues to be supported in Openbravo POS but it is no longer the default database engine.
Upgrade license to GPL version 3: With GNU GPL version 3 we are up to date with the latest version of the license and we close several gaps of the previous license like granting patent licenses to every user, extending compatibility with other free software licenses and dealing with the new threats to free software that have emerged since version 2 of the GNU GPL. You can read the announcement in my previous blog post.
Upgrade third party libraries up to the latest stable release: The following libraries has been updated: SwingX 0.9.5, Substance 5.1.
Improve receipt printer support: In this version Openbravo POS supports a larger set of receipt printers. It adds support for receipt printers with system drivers. Almost every receipt printer with system drivers is supported in Openbravo POS. It includes native support for Star Micronics receipt printers, and for text only receipt printers. It also has been improved the support for javapos fiscal printers.
Usability Improvements
- Panel to edit auxiliary products relation: Openbravo POS supports auxiliary products since older versions but this relation had to be configured manually editing the database. Now there is an Openbravo POS panel that helps editing auxiliary products relations.
- Add a dialog to find receipts in the edit sales panel. A new dialog has been added to find receipts without knowing the receipt number. Users will be able to search receipts by date, by type (sale or refund), by user, and by total.
- Add a keypad in the cash movements panel: With this addition the cash movement panel can be operated using only the touch screen. This is a good improvement for environments that need to manage the cash amounts directly from the Openbravo POS touch screen terminal.
- Add the possibility to print a partial report in the Close cash panel: Now it is possible to print the close cash report with the partial results without restarting the counters and totals. However you will be able to differentiate if the report is for the partial results or for the final results.

The PDA module has not been included in this beta because it was not ready. But we will try to release it as soon as possible.

The stable release will be available in some weeks, and there are still too many things to be done for this final version: Fix all planed bugs, write documentation, finish as many localizations as possible...

If you want to collaborate, please download the version and help us testing and giving us feedback in our forums.

Juan Pablo Aroztegi: Mercurial ready for Openbravo ERP

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:51:18 +0000

Openbravo ERP has moved from Subversion to Mercurial. Trunk and the stable branches have been migrated. Trunk has been renamed to “main”. The new server is located in Europe and its new name is code.openbravo.com. This is the new repository structure:

New repository structure

So for example main is located at: http://code.openbravo.com/erp/devel/main

If you browse to http://code.openbravo.com/erp/devel you’ll get the full list of ERP development repositories.

There is a new repository called pi, which stands for Pre-Integration. Till 2.50 is released we will only accept bugfix pushes to main. All new developments have to pushed to the pi repository. Then those developments will be integrated into main when the proper QA has been done.

So to begin with you should install Mercurial. Then if you haven’t done so it’s recommended to read the developer guide. Then, you can do a clone of main and play with it following the guide. You can also install and configure the Mercurial Eclipse plugin. Before pushing make sure you have properly configured Mercurial. Your credentials are the same one as with Subversion.

So from now on Subversion is not used for trunk and the stable branches. You should work on the new server and with Mercurial.

Tagged: Mercurial, SCM

Paolo Juvara: Quick status update on ERP 2.50

noreply@blogger.com (Paolo Juvara) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:12:32 +0000

My last blog post was focused on the status of Openbravo ERP 2.50. Since a month has gone by, I would like to give you a very quick status update on where we are now.

Since then, we had to modify our exit criteria to make it more reachable. In particular, we had to put a "cut off" date for the defects that we were planning to fix. We debated this both internally and in the Community and finally we settled with the following exit criteria:

Defects logged up to Feb 13th: 0 critical and major defect, less than 100 minor and trivial
Defects logged after Feb 13th: 0 defects with urgent priority
QA testing completed
Upgrader ready and tested

This criteria gave us a good provision for a) cleaning the backlog of old stuff and b) giving QA the flexibility to request fixes for as many show stoppers they feel are needed and hold the release until they are satisfied with its quality level.

We reached this exit criteria last week on February 24th. Since then, we have frozen the the development code line (Main, using the new Mercurial terminology) and are running various installation and upgrade tests with this final code.

We hope to release 2.50 Beta within this week.

Asier Lostalé: Using Mercurials bisect extension to find bugs

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:11:16 +0000

One week ago Openbravo ERP code was moved from Subversion to Mercurial. I am completely new to Mercurial and to distributed SCMs since I always worked with Subversion but, apart from the new concepts it incorporates, the transition was very smooth, at least till the moment. I’ve spent some time during the last days looking the extensions Mercurial has and, for me, one of the nicest ones is bisect. Bisect can be very useful to find the changeset when a bug was introduced in the code.

A real example

Recently I was assigned this bug. I discovered that it was not present in r2.40 but it was in development branch, furthermore, I find out the bug was caused because a line had been removed from the code. At this point I wanted to know which commit removed that line, just to know if it was a mistake or it was done on purpose trying to fix another bug, so the tedious work started: given two revisions one that has the bug (head of development branch) and another one that has not it (r2.40 tag) try different revisions in between to find which one removed the line that causes the bug. This is not only tedious but also very time consuming.

A good solution: bisect

Bisect is an extension for Mercurial that makes this kind of work much faster. Bisect’s behavior is pretty simple, you tell it the good and bad changesets and it updates your working copy to another one between them, then you can test if in that one the bug is present and you mark it as good or bad, then the process is run again until it finds the changeset that introduces the bug. In fact bisect just decides for you which is the next changeset to test in. It sounds not to be a very high improvement, but if you combine it with some simple (at least in some occasions) automated test the results can be awesome.

Let me explain it through a simple example:

First prepare the environment: a file with a lot of lines, and a commit somewhere there removing a line which we’ll look for afterwards.

$ hg init testBisect
$ cd testFile
$ cat testFile
This is
a file
with some feature
and this
line here
is needed to work fine

$ hg ci -A -m "init file"
adding testFile

$   for (( i = 0; i &lt; 335; i++ )); do echo "line"$i >> testFile; hg commit -m "change here"; done

$ sed -i 's/line here//' testFile

$ hg ci -m "this commit is buggy"

$ for (( i = 0; i &lt; 872; i++ )); do      echo "line"$i >> testFile;      hg commit -m "change here";      done

$ hg parents

changeset:   1208:7568a581b554
tag:         tip
user:        Asier Lostalé
date:        Mon Mar 02 11:13:39 2009 +0100
summary:     change here

Now we have 1208 changests! Let’s make the script to decide whether a revision is buggy or not and to continue looking in case it is not:

$  cat test1.sh

#!/bin/sh

MIN_ARGS=2
if [ $# -lt $MIN_ARGS ]; then
  echo "Usage: $(basename $0) FILE TEXT_TO_FIND" >&2
  exit 1
fi

FILE=$1
shift
TEXT_TO_FIND=$*

check() {
   grep -q "$TEXT_TO_FIND" $FILE && RESULT=good || RESULT=bad
   echo $RESULT

   hg bisect --$RESULT
}

while :
do
  if check | grep -q 'Testing changeset'
then
  echo
  hg bisect
else
  hg bisect
  exit 0
fi
done

Now we are ready to start testing, first of all reset bisect and tell it which is the bad and good known revisions. Bad is current one and good is the first one.

$ hg bisect --reset
$ hg bisect --bad
$ hg bisect --good 1
Testing changeset 604:9d6a42635e81 (1207 changesets remaining, ~10 tests)
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Finally just execute the test to find out who removed the line.

$ time ./test1.sh testFile 'line here'
Testing changeset 302:132a5339324e (603 changesets remaining, ~9 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 453:aa92eb899545 (302 changesets remaining, ~8 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 377:5c8e69bdb1ce (151 changesets remaining, ~7 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 339:05f7bb18e505 (75 changesets remaining, ~6 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 320:3107aee2dbd2 (37 changesets remaining, ~5 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 329:0d907ee53cdb (19 changesets remaining, ~4 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 334:8a0d38375333 (10 changesets remaining, ~3 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 336:dc2037e24dfc (5 changesets remaining, ~2 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Testing changeset 335:939ca611ae0f (2 changesets remaining, ~1 tests)
0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
The first bad revision is:
changeset:   336:dc2037e24dfc
user:        Asier Lostalé
date:        Mon Mar 02 11:11:52 2009 +0100
summary:     this commit is buggy

real    0m1.374s
user    0m1.128s
sys    0m0.204s

And we are done: in less than 1.5s we know which is the commit that removed the line!

Though this example is quite theoretical I think bisect is a very good solution for this kind of searches. Do you have experience with this extension? Any comment about it is welcome.

Posted in Openbravo Tagged: mercurial, scm

Martin Taal: Openbravo 2.50: REST Webservices

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Taal) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:57:45 +0000

In this post I will talk about new very exciting functionality in Openbravo 2.50: full REST web services support for all tables in the Openbravo datamodel (including the tables added by modules).

I will first start with a general overview and then some examples of web service calls which you can try directly in your browser. The post is concluded with a short description on how to add your own REST-like web services and a number of interesting links on REST.

Openbravo REST provides a CRUD-like interface so that external applications can retrieve, update, create and delete business objects through standard HTTP requests.

Some benefits of using a REST approach:

favors identifying and addressing resources which fits to the data-centric nature of the provided apis (a resource corresponds to a business object)
has actions (POST, PUT, DELETE, GET) which correspond to standard CRUD actions
allows linking to specific business objects or to sets of business objects. This is a very powerfull feature of a REST approach and it allows for easy navigation between business objects.
is simple to develop and use, and very lightweight from an architectural point of view

The Openbravo REST webservice operates on Business Objects in Openbravo. Before continuing let's first explain what a Business Object is (in Openbravo). A business object can be a simple entity (==table) such as a currency which just has basic primitive fields. On the other hand it can also be a structure of entities, for example an order header with its order line.

Openbravo REST web services provide the following functionality:

retrieve a single business object or a list of business objects using a standard HTTP GET request
querying, filtering, paging and sorting of lists of business objects, again through standard HTTP requests
update of an existing business object or multiple business objects through XML and a HTTP POST or PUT operation
creation of new business objects through a POST/PUT operation
export and import of data: xml files which contain a mix of different types of business objects and a mix of new and existing business object
delete operation using either a url pointing to a specific business object which needs to be removed or a XML document which contains business objects (as full xml or as partial xml) which need to be removed.

This functionality can be used for standard integration scenario's, but it can also be used to develop another UI on top of Openbravo using an alternative UI-technology (e.g. Flex).

The Openbravo REST web services use the same access/authorizations as the standard Openbravo application. Before calling a web service the caller must log in. The login functionality is provided by the Openbravo REST framework. All REST actions are then executed in the context of a client/organization and current role of the user.

Now let's go to some examples. When you have Openbravo running then you can try these out directly in your browser by entering the urls in your browser's address bar. Note that the examples assume that Openbravo runs locally on port 8080, it maybe necessary to replace the localhost:8080 part with your own server name/port. The examples assume that the web service user has access to the Country and Currency tables.

Query for all Countries:

http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/Country

Get a specific Country (in this case Spain):

http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/Country/106

Note that the xml returned contains both the Country and its children (Regions), i.e. a business object structure.

An ordered example, query for all countries and return them ordered by ibanCode and regionName:

http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/Country?orderBy=iBANCode,regionName

The same example with paging, returns 10 Countries starting from the 19th:

http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/Country?orderBy=iBANCode,regionName&firstResult=19&maxResult=10

Do some filtering, only return countries which have a Currency with id 102 and a iBANLength of minimum 23:

http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/Country?where=currency='102' and iBANLength>=23

(the where parameter can contain a Hibernate Query Language where clause)

After trying some examples, the next question is which web services are provided by Openbravo, i.e. what url's are valid, what are the entity names and XML property names, what is valid xml? To answer this question Openbravo REST has a special web service which can be called. This web service generates a XML Schema of the available business objects and their elements (including the tables added by custom/external modules). You can try it yourselve on your local running Openbravo instance:
http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/schema

These first examples only retrieved data. The REST web services also have update/create/delete functions. To support web service testing, Firefox has a nice add-on: Poster. This add-on allows you to POST/PUT XML to a URL. For these examples I again assume that you have Openbravo running locally. I will be creating a new currency, updating its precision and then deleting the currency.

Here is an example of xml which can be used to create a new Currency:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ob:Openbravo xmlns:ob="http://www.openbravo.com">
<Currency>
<active>true</active>
<iSOCode>OBD</iSOCode>
<symbol>€</symbol>
<description>Openbravo Dollars</description>
<standardPrecision>2</standardPrecision>
<costingPrecision>4</costingPrecision>
<pricePrecision>4</pricePrecision>
<currencySymbolAtTheRight>true</currencySymbolAtTheRight>
</Currency>
</ob:Openbravo>

You can easily create this xml by retrieving a Currency through a url (for example, the euro) and then removing the XML parts related to id, client/organization and audit info.

Click on the Poster icon (right-bottom in Firefox) and set the options as displayed in the image below.

Note that the xml (displayed above) is entered in the Content field, the Action is set to POST and the User Auth. fields contain the login and password. The user must have permissions to create a Currency. The standard Openbravo demo user has these capabilities.

Then click on the first GO button, you should be seeing the following result:

This xml gives a success message but more importantly it also gives the id back of the newly created object. This allows software, making REST calls, to use this id in further processing. In our case we can use this id to check if the currency was indeed created (note replace the id in the url with the id you received back):
http://localhost:8080/openbravo/ws/dal/Currency/FF8081811FA6E26B011FA6EA2E9C0002

Now as a next step let's update a field of the new Currency, in this case the precision is changed. The image below shows how this is done. The xml only has the field which needs to be updated and the id of the Currency is present as an xml attribute (to try-this-at-home, replace the id value with the one created in your case).

And to clean up let's delete the new currency. This is done with a DELETE action, the url of the action needs to point to the business object which needs to be deleted (in this case the Currency created above).

The above actions can be performed for all of the 425+ tables in Openbravo. More importantly REST webservices automatically work out-of-the-box also for new tables added by modules.

The delete action concludes the quick overview of the capabilities of Openbravo REST Webservices. The overview hopefully showed how easy it is to use REST webservices. Software talking to REST webservices need basic xml processing capabilities but that's the only real prerequisite.

The Openbravo REST framework can be extended with new Webservices. See here for more information. Openbravo REST takes care of security and exception handling. Web services can be added (installed/uninstalled) as part of a module.

For more information:

REST Webservice Technical Design
REST test cases can be found in the openbravo development project in the src-test folder and then in the org.openbravo.test.webservice package

Here are some other interesting (non-Openbravo) links:

Fielding's Dissertation (Mr. Fielding is the first one to explicitly define the REST concept)
Wikipedia on REST
How to create a REST protocol
Building Web Services the REST way

Some links related to REST versus SOAP, there is a fair amount of articles on the web on this topic:

Jordi Mas: Openbravo Community awards: nomination period starts

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:31:02 +0000

March 2nd- 16th: Candidate nomination period. This is the time where you can nominate people and companies that you think have done an important job for the Openbravo ecosystem in each of the categories defined. You can also nominate yourself and the company you work for.
March 20th-31st: Candidates published and voting period open. This is the time where you can vote for the selected nominees for every category.

As of now, you can start nominating the people in the Openbravo Community that have made a difference to you.

Can you think of someone that has been especially helpfully in the forums?
Can you think of a blog or documentation with Openbravo as the main topic which has been useful to you?
How about relevant localization efforts that have been beneficial to you?

Now is the time for you to honor unsung heroes!

Everyone can nominate their favorite candidates for each category. At the end of the process, a list of accepted candidates matching the selection criteria will be compiled for every category.

Participate and make your voice count!

For questions or comments regarding the voting process, don’t hesitate to contact me: jmas at openbravo.com

Adrián Romero: Openbravo POS upgrades its license to GNU GPL version 3

noreply@blogger.com (Adrián Romero) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:32:35 +0000

With the publication of the upcoming new release of Openbravo POS we have decided to upgrade the terms of its license from GNU GPL version 2 to version 3. With GNU GPL version 3 we are up to date with the latest version of the license and we close several gaps of the previous license like granting patent licenses to every user, extending compatibility with other free software licenses and dealing with the new threats to free software that have emerged since version 2 of the GNU GPL.

Jordi Mas: Openbravo ERP Modularity videos available

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:02:41 +0000

Modularity is the most important feature debuting in Openbravo ERP R2.50. As a result of the modularity improvements in 2.50, developers will notice the following:

Easier to contribute to Openbravo ERP by allowing distributed and decoupled development and maintenance of optional features.
A rich set of extensions for the Community to meet their unique business requirements without bloating the core product.
Shorter implementation cycles by enabling system integrators to develop micro-vertical templates.
Scalable business opportunity by creating modules once that can be easily reused in multiple implementations, or sold to others implementing Openbravo ERP.

As part of the modularity program that we offered during the 2.50 alpha process, we created some videos to explain the main modularity concepts and workflows to the participants. We have just edited and published the videos in Openbravo Wiki.

The videos published are the following:

Course Introduction. A high level introduction of Openbravo modularity capabilities and benefits for users and developers.
Modularity Concepts‎. An introduction to the main Openbravo modularity concepts, including types of modules, the central repository and the module manager console.
Create a module. A description of the steps required to create, register, develop and publish a module.
Install a module‎. A step by step tutorial on how to install an Openbravo ERP module.
Update a module‎. A step by step tutorial on how to update an Openbravo ERP module.
Uninstall a module. A step by step tutorial on how to uninstall an Openbravo ERP module.

In case that you have little time, I strongly recommend you the modularity concepts videos that gives a good overview of Openbravo modularity from a developer's point of view.

If you have any questions regarding modularity please do not hesitate to post them in the Openbravo ERP developers forum.

Juan Pablo Aroztegi: Mercurial coming soon

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:38:15 +0000

Once Openbravo ERP 2.50beta is frozen, we plan to move trunk and the stable branches from Subversion to Mercurial. Check the new developer’s documentation.

We’ll let you know about the server details just before launching the migration. Please read the document and don’t hesitate to ask any doubts you have about this.

There is also an older document explaining the rationale behind this change.

To follow this migration more closely join or read the openbravo-development mailing list.

Oh, and presenting myself in my first post, my name is Juan Pablo Aroztegi, I work in Openbravo since August 2006 and I’m currently in the Release Management Team. My contact details in the about page.

Tagged: Mercurial, SCM

Manel Sarasa: Open source comes of age: Jesper Balser joins Openbravo board

noreply@blogger.com (Manel Sarasa) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:11:50 +0000

Since Openbravo was founded in 2006, the adoption of open source enterprise applications has been increasing at an unstoppable rate.

The commitment of our team, community and partners is reflected in the calibre of our executive leadership, which was further strengthened by the news that Jesper Balser will join the Openbravo board of directors, Navision co-founder and former head of strategy at Microsoft Business Solutions.

The news has been well received. On the CNET ‘Open Source’ blog, Matt Asay says “Open source has clearly gone mainstream. It is attracting some of the best and brightest from the proprietary-software world, as they see the writing on the wall for incumbents.”

The VAR Guy, meanwhile, says the news signals “growing momentum for business-centric open source applications” and “highlights Openbravo’s continued investments in its IT channel partners.”

A decade ago, proprietary software companies poured scorn on claims about Linux’s reliability, support, mainstream adoption and ROI. But it didn’t stop users, businesses and governments all switching to Linux in droves, precisely because of its reliability, stability, security, cost-effectiveness and innovation.

More recently, open source business applications came under the same sort of fire. But adoption has still been unstoppable, and for all the same reasons. It’s no longer a question of ‘going mainstream’: open source applications are already there. If you wish to form your own opinion, you might want to attend the upcoming Openbravo World Conference in Barcelona, April 18-19th.

Jesper has the insight, the experience and the ability to guide Openbravo to the next level of enterprise adoption. We’re delighted to have him on board and we hope you’ll join us in welcoming him to Openbravo and to the open source applications community.

Openbravo's SourceForge news: Openbravo ERP: 2.50alpha-r11 available

jaimetorre@users.sourceforge.net (Jaime Torre) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:22:01 +0000

Openbravo ERP is a Web based ERP for SME, built on proven MVC & MDD framework that facilitate its customization. Already in production, Openbravo ERP encompasses a broad range of functionalities such as finance, supply chain, manufacturing & much more. (0 comments)

Rob Goris: Concepts for Openbravo ERP Redesign

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Goris) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:15:13 +0000

We are continuously improving our products and raise the bar with every release. Recently we have started to look at some very fundamental parts of the User Interface of Openbravo ERP and came up with ideas for a future redesign. User feedback told us that there is a need for more powerful and flexible search functionality. We also learned that many user like to edit the grids (tables) directly in the cells and that switching between different records at the same time would be very useful. Furthermore, we are looking at offering more functionality in the context of tasks and we also believe that there is a need for more high level and summarized views on data.

Here we would like to give you a peek preview of the stuff we are working on and give you the opportunity to give your feedback. Our approach is holistic: we believe that all functionality should be working in the context of user journeys rather than just plugging in new features left and right. That's why we also want to propose a complete new Master-Detail concept in which all other functionality is embedded.

Images say more than words so check out the Demo Videos and discuss them on the User Experience Lab forum:

Please also fill out the surveys for Master Detail, Search & Filter, My Workspace and Overall Impression.

I am looking forward to a lively discussion.

Thanks, Rob

Asier Lostalé: New build process: keep it simple

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:34:38 +0000

(Old) Problems

For Openbravo ERP developers (specially for newcomers) it has always been difficult to decide which of the available build tasks was the best election to build the system after any development they had done. We had to take into account what modifications were done to know which ant task we should run. For example if we had modified a window we would use ant compile -Dtab=myWindow to generate the code just for that window and not for the rest of them. It was even worse when working with subversion, each time we updated our working copy we had to look which were the files that had been updated to know if it was necessary to run update.database to synchronize Openbravo model database(database schema objects and applicatoin dictionary data) from XML files. And in case there were modifications there it was worth re-generate all the WAD windows because it was difficult to know which ones had been modified. So many times compile.complete was the “safe” but slow choice.

Upadate.database task had two more inconvenients: the first one was that in case Openbravo model was modified locally and not exported (ant export.database), when executing this task we would lose all the changes done in database for application dictionary. This annoying behavior had been reported as a bug. The other inconvenient was that during the r2.50 development cycle, specially because of the usage of DAL as part of the update process, this task was pretty unstable, making people not to be very confident about using it. As result people felt safer by recreating the whole system (ant install.source) instead of executing a much faster incremental build (ant update.database compile.complete).

New task: smartbuild

For Openbravo ERP r2.50 we have resolved these problems by simplifying the build process with a new incremental build task: smartbuild, which is currently available in trunk (r12753) and will be release in the next alpha (aplha r11). This task performs all the required processes to build your system but only the required ones, with a huge improvement in performance. It checks whether the database needs to be updated from xml sources and performs the update only if needed, generates the code that needs to be regenerated, compiles and deploys it.

The goal of this smartbuild is to replace most of the rest of tasks, making life a little simpler for developers. So now it is only needed to use two tasks: smartbuild for all the builds and export.database to export database to xml files. export.database is now smart to export only if needed, skipping the process if no changes have happened in the local Openbravo model.

Moreover update.database ensures before updating that no local changes have occured in Openbravo model since the last synchronization (export.database or update.database) to prevent people loosing their changes. In case of changes, people will be required to export their database before updating it.

How it works

Determine if database needs to be updated. To do this smartbuild generates a checksum for the xml files and compares it with an existent one. This one is generated each time database is synchronized from xml files or to xml files. If the two checksums are different it means that xml files are different so database is updated.
Decide which code needs to be re-generated. Whenever a build process is done a timestamp with the current time is stored in database. This timestamp is compared with the audit info for the application dictionary objects that participate in the code generation so now WAD is able to generate code only for those elements that have been created or modified after the last build. Additionally when exporting database to xml files the audit info is not longer exported and when updating the audit info is recalculated for the current time, thus it also works in case the modifications in application dictionary came from an update.database. There’s only one case when this check doesn’t work: it is when application dictionary elements are modified directly in databse through insert/update SQL statements without updating audit info. In this case the developer will have to generate the code in the old way (using compile -Dtab=modifiedWindows).
Check if database has been changed. This check allows to export only if there’re changes in database and prevents data loses when updating database. To check this it is used the same timestamp as in the first point. Modifications in data are calculeted by DAL and modifications in database structure are queried directly to database. The query for database structure last modification has no problem in Oracle becuase User_Objects table stores the last physical change for each database object, but in PostgreSQL that information is not stored in database. This has been solved for PostgreSQL generating a checksum in database from all the elements in database that can be exported to xml files, that’s the reason why in PostgreSQL this check takes longer than in Oracle.

Posted in Openbravo Tagged: developers utilities, r2.50

Openbravo's SourceForge news: Openbravo ERP: 2.50alpha-r10 available

jpabloae@users.sourceforge.net (Juan Pablo Aroztegi) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:14:32 +0000

Adrián Romero: Openbravo POS 2.30 delayed

noreply@blogger.com (Adrián Romero) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:04:16 +0000

As published in the Openbravo POS roadmap, the planned dates for Openbravo POS 2.30 were 30th January 2009 for the beta release and 27th February 2009 for the production release. Unfortunately we have not been able to publish the beta release the 30th January and for sure it will not be possible to release the production release on time.

The progress of the development of the features for the 2.30 is going as expected but the development team is not very big and we have accumulated a few weeks of delay due to competing priorities.

If you cannot wait until the release of the beta or the production release because you want to see the progress about features like the PDA module for restaurants, the data integration processes between Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS, ... You can access the subversion repository, download the sources and compile yourself Openbravo POS. It is very easy and everything is documented. Just follow the steps of the Developer's Guide.

We expect not to delay the publication of the beta and the production releases more than one month. And any change in this situation will be communicated to the Openbravo POS community. Stay tuned...

Jordi Mas: Single Sign on launched for Openbravo Wiki and Openbravo Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:12:22 +0000

Openbravo actually runs Openbravo.com, Openbravo Issues, Openbravo Wiki, Openbravo Planet and other web properties to provide services to the Openbravo ecosystem. Nowadays, you have to log individually to every service, which requires authentication. For example, you have to login in Mantis and to our Wiki separately since they work as separated systems. You also may use different usernames and passwords. This situation is going to get more complex as we introduce more web services that require authentication for a full user experience.

To address this situation we have been working on a Single Sign-On solution based on CAS. This will allow users to have a single username and password for all Openbravo web site. More convenient yet, when you are authenticated in one Openbravo web sites you are automatically authenticated into the rest of other sites.

We are planning to enter into production of Single Sign-On in Openbravo web sites by 4th of February 20.00 GMT+1.

Users affected with this migration will be notified by email with any required step that they have to perform.

If you have any issue login into the systems, please let us know sending an email to migration@openbravo.com, specifying your name, the email you entered at the time of registration, the username that you usually employ, and the problem you are experiencing.

Thanks for your support!

Paolo Juvara: 2.50 status update and statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Paolo Juvara) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:57:17 +0000

It has been 2 months since we launched 2.50 alpha and I would like to give you an update on our progress in the stabilization process.

In short, it is taking longer than we expected and we still are finding many issues. As you might know from our wiki, our criteria for completing the alpha testing and starting beta is to reach zero critical and major defects, and less than 100 minor and trivial defects combined.

During 2.40, this process took us 8 weeks so we were expecting that it would have taken roughly the same amount of time for 2.50, but things are not going in the same way.

We started the 2.40 alpha cycle on May 23, 2008 with an overall backlog of 278 open defects. In the 8 weeks till July 18th, when we published beta, 357 new defects were logged and we closed a total of 534, leaving the backlog level at 95 open defects, in line with our exit criteria. The historical trend is summarized in the image below.

When we started 2.50 alpha on the November 21st, we had a similar backlog of 271 product defects. However, since then and up to the end of January 2009, 646 defects have been reported and we have closed 684 defects, leaving the current backlog at 233.
The 2.50 historical trend is in the image below and as you can see, 10 weeks into the alpha cycle, the progress is very uncertain and we have been blocked at this level for a while.

How do we justify that? Have we been sleeping on the job? Actually, we made a lot of progress:

We fixed almost precisely the same number of defects per week in 2.50 as we did in 2.40 (68.4 defects per week in 2.50 vs. 66.7 defects per week in 2.40);
We published 9 alpha versions, both in source code format and in the handy appliance format to ease testing
We manned the Modularity Program that supports about 20 early adopters that are actively developing extensions on top of 2.50.

The thing is... the defect inflow has been 40% higher in 2.50 than in 2.40 (65 defects per week vs 45 defects per week) and this is what is slowing us down.

But then... how do we explain this increase? I really do not have a very strong argument to explain it in definitive terms, but I can put forward some theories:

We do a much better job at testing compared to previous releases. In particular, compared to 2.40, our dedicated QA team has grown more than 300%
Our community usage of previous releases has grown dramatically in recent months and many users are stressing the systems in ways it was not stressed before. Of the 646 reported defects, 155 (or 24%) have been reported against a production release.
Our community is testing this early release very actively: 2.50 alpha gets downloaded around 800 times a week (without even counting people who install from sources using our SVN repository) and around 10% of the defects are reported by community testers.

The complete explanation is probably a mix of all the above points. Overall, this means that 2.50 is going to be the best release ever in terms of quality. Our exit criteria, in fact, is not time driven but quality driven and we will not release the beta version until the intended level of quality has been reached.

Because we do not have a time boundary, it is difficult for us to predict the availability date of 2.50 beta. We hope that it is going to be within a few weeks but you can monitor the progress of our stabilization effort live: if you are an iGoogle user, click here to add a Google Gadget with daily update of our progress graph as in the image below.

You can help us in this process by contributing to the testing effort. Please do download our latest alpha release and test it out. You can participate in the Community testing program organized by our QA team provided or just verify whatever feature is most important to you. In any case, please do not forget to report your defects!

Openbravo's SourceForge news: Openbravo ERP: 2.50alpha-r9 available

jpabloae@users.sourceforge.net (Juan Pablo Aroztegi) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:23:50 +0000

Asier Lostalé: Multithread safe servlets

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:23:59 +0000

This posts explains the multithreading safety problem and explains how it can be prevented. I’m writing about it because recently I’ve fixed a bug in Openbravo ERP related with issue, and I would like to remind developers about this problem to take it into account.

The way Tomcat manages servlets is creating one instance of the object and having multiple threads invoking methods on that instance, each of these threads is serving each of the multiple simultaneous request. Thus a single servlet instance can be used at the same time by different users.

All this must be kept in mind when developing servlets in order to prevent dirty global properties readings. Let me explain through a little example, let’s define a servlet:

public class Test extends HttpServlet {
private String st;

  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
         throws IOException, ServletException {
    st = readStringFromSomewhereElse();
    //... do other stuff here
    System.out.println(st);
  }
}

In this case there could be two users accessing the doPost method simultaneously using the same instance of Test class, the first one could set the st as “A” and before printing its value the second one could set it as “B”, the the first one would print “B” instead of “A” as it would expect. In this case this property would have a static behavior.

So this pattern should be avoided when developing servlets, this is, there should not be global properties modified in the doPost method (or in any other one called from it). Generally, this can be easily solved using variables inside the doPost method instead of global properties. In fact, global properties should be initialized just once in the init method and not modified afterwards.

Posted in Openbravo Tagged: Java

Openbravo's SourceForge news: Openbravo ERP: 2.50alpha-r8 available

jaimetorre@users.sourceforge.net (Jaime Torre) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:43:05 +0000

Galder Romo: Data migration, watch out!

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:38:54 +0000

Usually, nor sales responsibles neither consultants give data migration task the importance they should during the sales process, but they consume a really hugh amount of not planned time.

Migration tasks include: extracting, transformating and loading which are also known as ETL tasks.

As we all agree, the effort required to migrate the data of a small enterprise who manages all their activity using spreadsheets is not the same as a large company with a previous ERP system that wants to keep all its historical activity.

Therefore, I would like to enumerate few points to be taken into consideration, before delivering a proposal, for a correct effort evaluation:

Master data & historical data: Master data or reference data(business partners, products, accounting plan, assets, banks, taxes, production plans, etc.) is what really makes sense to migrate instead of typing them manually. Historical data (orders, receipts, shipments, invoices, bank statements, amortizations, accounting entries, etc.) can be usually reviewed on the old system, so probably we could convince the customer it is not really necessary. Somehow, it is important to realize a historical data migration always requires a master data migration, and also note a historical data migration can take 4 times the master data migration. (20% & 80%).
Accounting data & management data: There is also also difference between migrating just the accounting data or having to migrate all the invoices, bank statements, daily cashes, etc. in order to create the accounting data by the new application. Accounting data migration may take 20% of time than management data will.
Period of time: Although the period won’t change the scope of the migration task, for sure, more defects and inconsistencies will be found as larger is the period. If we ask to the customer about the migration period, they will always say: “all existing information”.
Extraction and transformation tasks included & excluded: Too often, when talking about migration we forget extraction and transformation tasks. Sometimes it is clear we do not know about the old system or the customer does not want to give us access to it, so it is clear we can’t deal with the extraction and transformation, but anyway, it is important to make it clear who is responsibe for data extraction and transformation. Not extracting data correctly when we have invested time on it can be a big issue. I’ll always try to ask for extracted and transformed data, ready to be loaded.
Extracted data consistency and validation: If we can’t avoid extraction and transformation tasks, make sure the customer validates what you are going to migrate. It is useful to deliver lists or spreadsheets containing the final migration result before we finally load it so the customer can validate it.

As I tried to explained, migration offering needs to be detailed as possible in order to avoid future issues or project deviations from proposal.

Global Partner Services: Online courses and Openbravo's e-learning strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Eugeni Vives) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:22:10 +0000

The end of the year was an exciting period for the Global Partner Services, wrapping up a successful year, planning new products for 2009, while delivering some of the latest ones.

The Education department was proud to introduce the new Online Basic Functional Training in a unique e-learning format. The 5-week long course took place between the 17th of November and 19th of December. Eight students participated and completed the course which was an overall success.

The course covers the basic functionality and usability of Openbravo ERP:

Using a Learning Management System (based on Open Source Moodle platform) and practical use of Openbravo ERP hosted on Amazon, the Online Basic Funtional Training provides a unique learning environment supervised by Openbravo training specialists, which also includes the following:

Weekly live sessions through webcast
News blog where live sessions and other news are published
Materials (navigable slide show) for each module
Links to additional readings
Quizzes
Discussion and Q&A forums answered by Openbravo Training Specialists
Exercises and assignments
A link to each participants' own Openbravo ERP application, which is used to experience the product and execute the exercises and assignments
Evaluation form

This way the students are given various channels of content, making sure that exercises, quizzes and assignments are successfully completed.

Openbravo's online courses are the answer for those individuals with limited time, and who cannot necessarily afford to fly to a location to complete one of our live intensive courses.

As for the upcoming year, we will continue expanding our online course offer to keep pursuing the efficient dissemination of Openbravo knowledge.

Rok Lenardic
Senior Training Specialist

Martin Taal: Openbravo 2.50: Data Access Layer in the overall Openbravo Architecture

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Taal) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:37:49 +0000

This post discusses the architecture of the new Data Access Layer and its place in the rest of the current and future envisioned architecture.

The image below illustrates the different layers of the Openbravo architecture. Part of the architecture is delivered in 2.50 other parts will be delivered in future releases.

The Data Access Layer (DAL) uses the application dictionary as the basis for its operations. The application dictionary defines the tables, columns and data types in Openbravo (for example Business Partner, Sales Order, etc.). The Data Access Layer uses the application dictionary for two purposes:

to generate Java business objects at development time
at runtime to generate a Hibernate mapping to persist the business objects

To perform these two steps the DAL reads the application dictionary from the database and builds an in-memory representation. This is called the runtime model. Having the model in-memory makes it possible to use the model in an efficient way for different kinds of tasks (security checking, validation, etc.)

So at development time Java business objects are generated for each table in the system. The columns of the table corresponds to properties (getters/setters) in the generated Java class. The foreign key columns are present as references to other generated business objects. The business object generation is done as part of the standard Openbravo build steps. The generated classes can be found in the src-gen folder in the openbravo development project.

At runtime the DAL is responsible for generating the mapping for Hibernate and configuring Hibernate.
The DAL provides an API to store, query and remove business objects from the database. This DAL service layer takes care of validation and security checks. In a future Openbravo release this API will be used to develop the business logic layer. The business logic layer will replace the current stored procedures and triggers. The business service layer will provide an API to the outside world to run business logic within Openbravo.

Two other interesting components are also present: UI and Web Services. Integrating the DAL into the UI will be done in a future release. In 2.50 we provide a REST webservice layer which provides CRUD operations on all Openbravo business objects. I will discuss the REST Webservice support in the next post.

At runtime the DAL takes care of transaction handling and providing a context in which all DAL operations run. The transaction handling is done using the open-session-in-view pattern whereby the developer in general does not need to take care of transaction handling explicitly (but he/she can ofcourse when required). The Openbravo context object makes it easy for a developer to retrieve the current user object and other context information.

The following parts of the new architecture are delivered as part of 2.50:

Runtime Model
Generation of Business Object and Hibernate Mapping
DAL API
REST Webservices
Transaction Handling and User Context

The other components will be delivered as part of subsequent releases.

For more information here are two wiki documents which give some more details:

This hopefully gives a feel for the overall current and future architecture of Openbravo. In the next blog post I will discuss the new REST Webservice functionality in Openbravo 2.50.

Openbravo's SourceForge news: Openbravo ERP: 2.50alpha-r6 available

jaimetorre@users.sourceforge.net (Jaime Torre) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:45:16 +0000

Martin Taal: Openbravo 2.50: New Architectural Developments: Data Access Layer and REST Webservices

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Taal) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:15:10 +0000

The Openbravo 2.50 release contains a number of new architectural developments which can be of great interest for Openbravo developers and system integrators.

The first main development is the Data Access Layer which provides the application developer with an object-oriented view on the Openbravo database. The Data Access Layer is also used to support new XML conversion functionality which allows the application developer to convert business objects from and to XML. The XML conversion logic again forms the basis for export and import of Client data and new REST webservices functionality provided in Openbravo 2.50.

I will cover these new developments in a series of posts which will be published the coming weeks.

In this first post for Openbravo, let me also introduce myself. I am responsible for some of the new architecture developments at Openbravo, both design and development. My background is both in ERP system as well as technical Java coding. Next to Openbravo I am involved in open source development as a committer of the Eclipse Modeling Framework project. I am looking forward to work further on extending the Openbravo architecture and hope for extensive feedback from the community on the new developments in the Openbravo 2.50 release.

The starting point for the blog series will be the new Data Access Layer (DAL). The DAL provides an object-oriented layer over the Openbravo database. It is based on Hibernate using model-driven code generation techniques. The Data Access Layer provides the application developer with the following functionality:

type safe querying and retrieval of business objects from the database.
a convenient API to update or create new data in the database.
a type safe interface to update information of a business object, increased productivity by making the properties of a business object directly visible through getters and setters (in the development environment).
transaction and context handling.
security and validation checking.
automatically maps new entries in the application dictionary to database tables and columns.
generates Java class business objects (and their associations) on the basis of the Application Dictionary model.

With the DAL the application developer does not need to type in tedious/type-unsafe sql queries. He/she can make use of the code completion and compile time checking functionality of his/her development environment. The Data Access Layer can also be easily integrated in test driven development approach as it operates independent from servlet containers such as Tomcat.

The Data Access Layer uses an in-memory representation of the application dictionary (the runtime model). This runtime model is used to convert business objects from and to XML. The XML conversion functionality is very usefull for integration scenarios. It is the basis for new functions such as the export and import of Client data and Webservice functionality. The XML Conversion functionality will be discussed in a separate technical post.

The 2.50 release also provides completely new REST webservice functionality. The REST webservice offers a common APO to query, retrieve and update all Openbravo business objects (persisted in the database). The REST webservice can be reached using simple (REST) URI's making it easy to use, test and try out. The Openbravo REST framework is easy to extend and allows you to add your own (REST) webservices. I will spend a separate post on REST Webservices and how to create your own WebService.

This post was just an introduction to give you a feel for what is coming in 2.50. The next posts will dive into more details, starting with an architecture description followed by the standard Hello World DAL example!

Jordi Mas: Openbravo Community awards announced

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:57:32 +0000

The Openbravo Community awards are organized and sponsored by Openbravo to honor individuals and companies for their outstanding contributions to the Openbravo ERP and POS projects. The standards for companies and organizations are higher than for individuals and are proportionate to their level of resources.

The Individual Awards acknowledge people that have allocated time and resources to make Openbravo POS or ERP better projects and contain the categories; Best Quality Assurance, Best localizer, Best developer, Best support participant, in order to recognise contribution within these areas.

The Technology Awards recognize outstanding projects led by any company or organization built on top of Openbravo technology. In order to acknowledge contribution within these areas, the categories are; Best Localization, Best Implementation and Best Development.

The winners will be awarded during the Conference's World Community Day 2 - Sunday 19th April, 2009. An award certificate will be given to all the winners.

On 2nd March 2009 the Candidate nomination will open. Stay tuned for more details!

Galder Romo: Playing with POI (I)

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:51:44 +0000

Although the title sounds strange it has been a pleasure discovering POI!

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on a post, POI is an Apache project for spreadsheets generation. I had the opportunity to know about this new tool while advising Microgenesis in some of their current projects. Their customers required them quite difficult dynamic reports, thus, they decided to use POI.

This two, showing below (click on the image if you do not see the animation), are some of the very interesting customized reports developed for their customers:

Accounting Report:

Generated dynamically with the posted document’s information, allows the user have a general view of the accounting information during the last 5 years and also drilling down to each account’s amount. It is also possible to include some accounting ratios (liquidity, profitability, activity, profit margin, etc.) for a financial statement analysis and facilitate a better understanding of the information.

Assets Report:

Generated dynamically with all assets and amortizations information. Gives a whole idea of an enterprise assets value and situation for the selected year.

Both examples are generated as spreadsheets with all its functionalities: the user can change the information managing different scenarios and situations, create charts or graphics, edit and include new formules, etc.

I will give some technical explanation and code examples on next posts.

P.D.: You can also find some more POI examples here.

Openbravo's SourceForge news: Openbravo ERP 2.40 integration with Pentaho available

pjuvara@users.sourceforge.net (Paolo Juvara) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:29:46 +0000

Openbravo ERP is a Web based ERP for SME, built on the proven MVC & MDD framework that facilitate its customization. Openbravo ERP encompasses a broad range of functionalities such as finance, supply chain, manufacturing & much more (2 comments)

Jaime Torre: xeraf

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:58:18 +0000

As some of you already know, we are planning to migrate our SCM from
Subversion to Mercurial. We would like to share with you the work we
have already done and ask you for your collaboration and feedback.

We have created a document in the wiki that explains what have we
done and what the future steps are. The first thing we would like to ask
you is to read that document and give us feedback.

In that document, there is a section that explains some of the
processes that will be in place when we use Mercurial. The second thing
we would like to ask you is to test these processes. Are they correct?
Are we missing something?

If you want to help us testing, send an email to staff.rm@openbravo.com.
We will provide you all information needed to start testing (including
credentials to access some test repositories). The processes described
in the document are a recommendation, but you can test whatever you
want. If you think of any other process or of a different way of doing
things, feel free to explore them and give us your feedback.

Thanks in advance.

Jordi Mas: Packt Publishing is looking for an Openbravo ERP book author

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:07:51 +0000

The book publisher Packt Publishing is looking for an individual or a group of people that can write a book in English about Openbravo ERP. Their idea is to produce an introductory book that covers the main aspects of Openbravo ERP functionality, installation, configuration and customization. This can be of great help to newcomers to the Openbravo ecosystem.

Packt Publishing specializes in Information Technology and has boasts a large collection of publications in the area of Open Source and open technologies. Its books have a practical approach and focus on sharing the experiences of your fellow IT professionals in adapting and customizing today's application.

If you are interested or you require further details please contact Packt Publishing.

Josep Mitjà: Openbravo SMB Network 2.40 is available

noreply@blogger.com (Josep Mitjà) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:18:47 +0000

Some weeks ago, we announced the availability of Openbravo SMB Network 2.40, the professional subscription service for Openbravo ERP 2.40.

Openbravo SMB Network 2.40 is now the recommended choice for SMEs who want to deploy Openbravo ERP for production use.

Compared with the previous release, Openbravo ERP 2.40 provides:

Improvements in the user interface for better productivity, including full keyboard navigation and better visual feedback in the user interface
Better support for international deployments with better support for multi-schema accounting, withholding tax, VAT register or international bank account numbers
More out-of-the-box reports and functionalities like purchase requisitions support, goods receipt by PO number, enhanced projects & services module or historical salary category
Enhanced and more out-of-the-box reports
More capabilities built into the platform like enhanced security, audit trails and additional web services

For more details, you can read the complete release notes for Openbravo ERP 2.40.

Additionally, the Openbravo ERP SMB Network 2.40 appliance contains significant improvements compared to the previous edition, notably

Updated Administration Console
- New, cleaner look and feel
- Improved usability with better user feedback

Improved performance per GHz
- Native support for 64 bit architecture
- Latest versions of Ant, Tomcat, Apache and Oracle

Existing Openbravo Network subscribers can migrate their systems to the latest Openbravo ERP release and receive support with he same level enjoyed in the previous release without the need to pay additional fees. However, it is important to notice that the upgrade process will require a development project that clients will need to contract to their system integrator of reference on the basis of the need to update custom code developed for them. Therefore clients should only upgrade to the latest release if the new functionalities available offer an immediate return on investment.

Go Professional! Buy Openbravo Network.

Rachel Johnston: The Openbravo ERP glossary project: helping Openbravo users develop their understanding of ERP

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Johnston) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:44:31 +0000

When you are implementing an ERP system for the first time, you can be faced by a double learning curve. Not only do you have to learn the new software, but you have to become familiar with the theories and concepts of ERP that underpin it. ERP is a specialist area and it can feel like a whole new language.

That's why we've started compiling a glossary of terms on the wiki. The glossary covers specific Openbravo terms, but also both general ERP terms, and I'd like to request help from the community in taking it further.

It's a project that's easy to join in - it doesn't require a big time commitment and you can dip in and out of it at your leisure. If you are already an expert, you can help by defining some of the terms on the list. If you're a novice, you can help by adding any terms you don't understand to the list of candidates for inclusion.

The glossary stands on its own as a useful document, but as it grows we will be able to link to it from elsewhere in the wiki and also use it in online help. As a technical author it's also a useful reference for me as I work through the system documenting it.

To get involved, you just need to be a registered user on the Openbravo wiki. Contributions are very gratefully received.

Galder Romo: Aware Oracle 11g, login is case sensitive

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:27:46 +0000

During the years, Openbravo has run on top of different Oracle database versions: Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, etc. and now Oracle 11g. While this is an additive change for the Community Edition and Openbravo Basic Network, which continue to support Oracle 10g R2 and PostgreSQL (8.1.4 or 8.3.5) as well, Oracle 11g is now embedded in Openbravo SMB Network One for 2.40.

Of course, and I am not a database administrator neither a developer though, from my honest opinion many new interesting functionalities and bug fixing are included in this new release: database catching functionalities, virtual columns, etc. up to 482 new characteristics.

As always happens, many new features require us to change the way we usually do things, for example: Oracle 11g is case sensitive when
login. What does this mean? You could spend the whole morning trying to access to your database (even locking your database user) if you don’t realize Oracle 11g is now case sensitive…

ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

When I went through, I learnt the below:

1-Oracle 11g is case sensitive

This means, you need to introduce your database user and password with the correct case. To make sure how your database is configured, using
SQL*Plus as database system user:

SQL> SHOW parameter sec_case_sensitive_logon;

If you want to disable/enable this function (it is enabled by default), using SQL*Plus as database system user:

SQL> ALTER SYSTEM SET SEC_CASE_SENSITIVE_LOGON = FALSE or TRUE;

This is a new parameter on this release, not an existing parameter’s new default value.

2- sqlcase can change your password when creating a new user

Furthermore, it is important to realize there is another parameter that can change your new database user’s password:

SQL> SHOW SQLCASE;
sqlcase MIXED

sqlcase accepts three different values: UPPER (changes password to uppercase), LOWER (to lower case) MIXED (keeps the password as it is).

Depending this parameter’s value, when creating a new database user, it changes the password’s case. And this can also confuse yourself and avoid to success the login.

3- Unlocking the database user

The third action I did, was unlocking the locked database user

Also as database system user:

SQL> ALTER USER username ACCOUNT LOCK or UNLOCK;

I hope it helps, and you don’t spend the time I spent with this little issue…

Jordi Mas: Openbravo World Conference call for papers opens

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:52:54 +0000

The Openbravo World Conference is an initiative put forth to share and fuel the growth of the professional open source space, namely in the Openbravo ERP technology. We will be welcoming to the community days (18th and 19th of April 2009) all those belonging to the Openbravo ecosystem: community member such as developers, customers, partners, and also newcomers. The access to the two community days will be free and will only require previous registration, which is now open. Make sure to reserve your place soon as space is limited.

As an open source project, Openbravo has always relied on contributions to increase its value, and this Conference is no different. That is why we strongly encourage interested parties in contributing to this event by presenting their expertise to an audience of 300 professionals involved in the field of open source ERPs.

The call for papers is now open until January 31st, 2009. This is a great opportunity to share your vision and experience relating to the following topics with the Openbravo community:

* Openbravo projects’ future direction
* How to extend Openbravo project functionality
* How to boost collaborations and contributions within the Openbravo ecosystem
* Migration from closed source ERP into Openbravo
* Experiences in the area of localization
* Integration with third party software
* Best practices around Openbravo ERP and POS
* Unusual deployments of Openbravo ERP and POS

Presentations can either be 30-minute sessions (Q&A included) or can have a round table format. As you know, all of these are very important issues for the Openbravo community. We invite everybody to participate by sending us your ideas using the call-for-papers-form.

The proposal selection criteria will be the following:

* Adequate for the conference audience
* Focussing on Openbravo products
* Professionally written and presented
* Providing value to the attendees

We recommend to keep these in mind when preparing your proposals. Do not hesitate to contact me (jmas at openbravo.com) if you have any questions or suggestions.

We will also have a session dedicated to Openbravo Success Stories, so if you currently use or have implemented Openbravo ERP or POS, we want to hear from you!

For further details such as the Agenda and Keynote Speakers, please consult the Openbravo World Conference microsite.

Rob Goris: What And How Do You Search?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Goris) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:08:12 +0000

This question is so essential that it feels like asking you to describe how to make coffee. We have confidence in the best practices of coffee making but we would like to study your search behaviour when using ERP software. This will help us understand the problems and needs you have which will serve as input for a redesign of the search functionality.

This is the first part of a series of User Feedback Opportunities (UFOs) on Search & Filter. I do not want to throw lengthy surveys at you in this stage but wish to start an open discussion on this topic to get a high level understanding of your main search tasks. To facilitate the discussion, I have created four high level questions below with each four ideas to get you started. Later on, I will start showing you design concepts.

When replying please start commenting each idea with a rating: Very Unimportant, Unimportant, Neutral, Important, Very Important and try to vary (you shouldn't rate everything Very Important). This session wants to generate discussion so please type away: all ideas and feedback are more than welcome. Please note that many tasks become routine over time. This applies to coffee making but also to using ERP systems, so try to step away from what you currently do and focus on how you would like to do it.

A. Types of objects I search for

1. Records (such as business partners, products, invoices). And which identifier would be easiest to use in searching them?
2. Reports. And which identifier would be easiest to use in searching them?
3. Functionality in the application, such as items in the left navigation in Openbravo ERP.
4. A mixed bag of objects in- and outside my ERP system: records, reports, invoices, documents (even locally stored), the web, the CRM system, email, intranet.
5. Other, please describe

B. How I would like to search

1. Using one keyword field. When there are too many results, I would use additional filters to narrow down the result set.
2. Searching records “globally” across all tables. I would not have to go first to a Products view to search for a product but I could do it from anywhere.
3. Building complex QBE/SQL based queries to get an exact search result in one go.
4. Browsing the grid by scrolling through the records and optionally applying column filters.
5. Other, please describe

C. How often I execute recurring search tasks

1. I frequently execute the same searches again and again
2. I would like to be able to save search queries or have the system suggest queries to me that I frequently use.
3. I frequently work with the same objects (such as records) again and again
4. I would like to use certain views again for my search results, such as a grid with specific column order, visibility and filtering applied to it.
5. Other, please describe

D. What I would like to do with the search results

1. I would like to be able collect objects out of different search result sets and group them, for example by customer.
2. I would like to be able to compare objects.
3. I would like to be able to bookmark individual objects
4. I would like to be able to bookmark all objects in the search results
5. Other, please describe

Note: When we speak about “I”, we mean you or your customers. Feel free to forward this post to your customers.

Participate in this discussion now on the Openbravo UX Lab forum.

Thanks!

Jordi Mas: New category classifications for the Openbravo Wiki

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:34:58 +0000

Since its launch, the Openbravo Wiki has been growing steadily. In the last six months the documents published went from 600 to 1040 (as of today). Openbravo Wiki has more than 22.000 unique visitors and 200.000 page views per month. It has become the place of reference for Openbravo documentation sharing, development status and processes.

As a result of this growth, we need to review our categorization policy. Some of the categories contain over 200 articles, which makes it hard to use. When the Wiki was launched, Openbravo POS was not part of Openbravo's portfolio and was never accommodated properly in the Wiki categorization. Additionally, the number of translated documents has also been growing significantly, requiring a new taxonomy to allow them to be on par with those in the English language.

For all these reasons, we have put together a new taxonomy proposa l for Openbravo Wiki which aims to fix all these problems. We will move from a flat category structure to a taxonomy with subcategories, and more importantly, the new taxonomy will set the foundation for keeping our Wiki growing while efficiently classifying our content for our users' benefit. We are going to recategorize more than 1.000 documents to accommodate the new category system.

Please let us know if you have comments on the new category proposal, whether you would like to see new categories, or any other suggestion that you may have.

Galder Romo: Woof!

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:28:08 +0000

Woof, Woof, … the dog is not barking! is people on the office sharing files each other.
Woof is a small application for simply file exchange, based on Python. It is very simple and useful to share files with people around. Instead of sending via mail, messenger or skype, using a pendrive, … just Woof!

Have a look to this screenshot to understand how it works.

Woof screenshot

- You can see how to activate Woof.
- Once woof is executed, anyone can download the file I am sharing using the browser while you get the complete log of all downloads.

Thanks to Jaime, who talk us about it! Since them I have impressed many people with this little toy.

Rachel Johnston

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Johnston) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:01:26 +0000

My name is Rachel Johnston and this is my first blog post as Openbravo's technical author. In the months that follow, I'll be posting here to keep you up to date with documentation at Openbravo.

I started working at Openbravo at the end of August 2008, and as the company's first full-time author, I'm starting off by trying to address some of the immediate needs that users have identified. In particular, I'm aiming to deliver a complete configuration guide for Openbravo ERP by the end of 2008. As part of that process I'm also working on a quick start guide which covers the essentials - a small, easy-to-follow document that will make it easier for new customers and evaluators to get Openbravo ERP working "out of the box".

In the longer term I'll be completely revising, restructuring and rewriting the documentation set - including comprehensive online help. The aim is to change the user documentation from a product based approach, (describing what you can see on the interface) to a task based approach (explaining how to use the product to get things done). For more technical users, there are also plans to develop better resources for contributors and developers.

Although there is now a professional author in-house, contributions from the community are still very welcome. The wiki is still at the heart of Openbravo documentation, but the coming improvements will make better use of the material that's there, fill in the gaps and enable you to use the wiki in a more productive way.

If you have any requests, feedback or corrections, there is a Documentation thread on the sourceforge forum. Alternatively, post them here or e-mail me in person at rachel dot johnston at openbravo dot com

Paolo Juvara: Openbravo ERP 2.50 introduces modularity support - why should you care?

noreply@blogger.com (Paolo Juvara) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:14:01 +0000

Openbravo ERP 2.50, freshly released in alpha status, introduces many significant architectural enhancements in our ERP platform. Chief among them is modularity support.

With modularity, developers adding new capabilities to Openbravo ERP are able to easily extract, package and redistribute their extensions. Users of Openbravo ERP, on the other hand, are able to browse public extension in a central catalog, and download and install them from there, very much in the same way that they install browser plugins.

This modularity mechanism overcomes one of the most significant limitations of earlier versions of Openbravo ERP. In those releases, users were allowed and encouraged to change and extend the core product to adapt it to their specific requirements. The problem, however, was that once developed, it was very difficult to distinguish the extension from the core. As a result, it was virtually impossible to manage the extension independently.

People wanting to distribute new functionality were essentially limited to two options:

Build their features directly into core in strict collaboration with the Openbravo core development team and transferring their code under the terms of the Openbravo Contribution Agreement; or
Manage an entire version of Openbravo, assuming the overhead of not only supporting their own extensions, but the full Openbravo ERP base, including core and extensions.

Modularity resolves this problem by properly separating the ownership of software artifacts within the system. Each artifact, regardless of its type (database object, meta data registered in the Application Dictionary, source code, binary library or reference data) is owned by one and only one module. It is therefore possible, literally at the press of a button, to isolate, extract and package in a reusable container any individual extension.

Once packaged, a module is contained in a single obx file, which makes it very easy to transport it and to re-use it in different environments.

Additionally, in case developers want to share their work with the rest of the Community, they can very easily publish their modules to a Central Repository. Other users are then able to browse the Central Repository in search of modules providing features that are relevant to them, and easily deploy them to their environment.

So...why is this so important and why should you care?

If you are a developer, a system integrator, or an independent software vendor, modularity enables many interesting things for you:

Distributed development - Developers can now develop and distribute additional functionality in a totally independent manner with minimal interaction with the Openbravo development team.
Lower barriers to contribution - Contributing to Openbravo core is quite time consuming. Core features need to be general enough to be used by different users, in different industries and different geographies; they need to be fully aligned with the current Openbravo architecture and its future directions; they need to be multi-lingual and platform independent; they need to be tested on both Oracle and PostgreSQL; they need to be thoroughly documented, fast and scalable. All of this takes a considerable amount of effort.
With modules, on the other hand, developers have a lot more control on the amount of investment they want to make. They can choose to do all of the above; or they can do less. They can, for instance, decide to develop a feature that targets only one industry; or to develop it in only their native language; or to support only one specific database. These trade-offs will limit their audience, but that is perfectly OK for a module and, if the modules proves to be successful, it can always be broadened in subsequent versions.
Shorter time to market - Core contributions can only be published together with Openbravo ERP, typically in the next version of the product. On the other hand, because modules have an independent life cycle they can be published as soon as they are ready.
Global reach for all contributors - Anybody, anywhere, can publish a module to the Central Repository and anybody, anywhere, can download modules from it.
Thanks to that, module developers in our Community now have a channel to distribute their independent work anywhere in the world, taking advantage and leveraging the global Openbravo Community.
Licensing freedom - Because modules are distributed independently from Openbravo ERP, module authors have the flexibility to choose their preferred license. They can distribute their work under the Openbravo Public License, but they can also choose GPL, BSD or any other license. Module authors can even choose to distribute their work under a proprietary license that allows them to commercialize their efforts.
Community collaboration - Because modules are published in the Central Repository, all developers in our Community are informed of what others are doing, and can decide to reuse and collaborate instead of restarting from scratch. For example, an ISV interested in providing an advanced Human Capital Management pack, rather than starting from ground zero, could reuse an existing personnel management module and an existing payroll module developed by other Community members. The ISV could then complete the solution by developing a brand new recruitment module, package, and deliver the whole thing as a single solution pack.
Development scalability - As a consequence of distributed development, the Openbravo development team, with its limited capacity, is no longer a constraint to our Community's ability to grow and to advanced the overall value of the Openbravo ERP solution.
Drive-by contributions - I first heard this term reading one of Matt Asay's posts and I immediately loved the idea. The concept is that people rarely start a project with the idea of contributing it to the common code pool of the community. In most cases, they just do something because they need it, and the success of an open source community largely depends on its ability to capture and leverage these efforts, enabling people to contribute their work while driving-by, on their way to somewhere else and without getting too much out of their way.
One of the small but very important features of 2.50 is that Openbravo Core is itself a module, initially delivered in status "not in development", which means that, by default, it cannot be modified. While it is possible to change this default setting, now the natural behavior is to implement extensions and personalizations as separate modules. If later developers realize that what they built is of generic interest and decide to package and publish it, they can do so very simply, by just pressing a button. It's that easy, and it does not require them to plan ahead. They can do it on their way to the implementation project, without having to think twice.

If you are a user, modularity will bring you the following benefits:

Broader and deeper functional coverage - Because of the points above, soon our users will be able to choose among a very large set of available modules, which will enable Openbravo ERP to support all sorts of functionality, targeting many different industries and companies of all sizes.
Better localization support - We expect that our localization support - a key success factor for an ERP - will dramatically improve. Today every implementation project, in every country, needs to develop a number of custom extensions to meet local business practices. Local legal reports and declarations, connectors to local banks and support for local payment methods are only examples of things that every implementation needs to sort out. Thanks to the drive-by contribution power of modularity, all of these customizations can be easliy published as modules facilitating local communities to leverage each other's work and experience.
Lower total cost of ownership and improved ROI - The broad availability of extension modules, some of them packaged as implementation templates targeting specific verticals in specific geographies, will simplify most implementations to the selection and assembly of pre-existing compenents. Eliminating most of the effort in custom development will dramatically drive down the implementation costs, making the leading open source ERP solution accessible to an even broader class of enterprises and further improving the return on investment for everybody.
Reduced implementation time and faster ROI - Minimizing custom development will shorten the implementation time, producing a faster return on investment for all projects and allowing users to join the revolution and start enjoying the benefits of their Openbravo ERP in a shorter period of time.

Modularity is a very significant step forward in the progression of the Openbravo ERP project. Starting from 2.50, Openbravo, the company, ceases to be the only party with the power and authority to move Openbravo ERP forward. That responsibility is now shared with an ecosystem of users, developers, system integrators and independent software vendors that together form a fully empowered Community, able to unleash the full potential of open source.

For all of these reasons, Openbravo ERP 2.50 is a seminal release for our project. Please help us to stabilize it and quickly bring it from alpha to production status by installing it and helping us with testing. You can also experience the power of modularity by developing a module of your own: simply follow the Developer's Guide and you will be ready in no time. If you are unsure of what module to build, we can even provide you with some ideas.

In any case, do not forget to give us your feedback by posting your comments in the Early Releases Discussion forum.

Galder Romo: Lists, Reports and Dynamic analyzers

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:24:11 +0000

Always have been said an ERP implementation project has 4 main hot issues: FIREs (Forms, Interfaces, Reports and Extensions). And I will like to go a bit further on reports issue.

As the technology has improved and new platforms have been developed new and much more sofisticated reports can be done. The users know it, and they want to have more detailed and feature full reports.

Nowadays, and from a consultant point of view, reports should be classified properly:
1- List: A list of activity or master data. Including some columns. An being able to filter by any column on the list. Not difficult to achieve.
For example: A list of all the invoices ordered by invoice date and including business partner, invoice date, base amount, tax amount and total amount.
2- Report: Detailed information, properly structured, ready to make a decision. Information filtered by dates, customers, products, organizations, etc. and also totalized per period and business partner. Not as easy as a list.
For example: A report which shows all the cash forecast depending on may pending payments and receivables.
3- Dynamic analyzers: It is not enough having the data well structured on the report. The users wants to be able to play with the data the report toke out of the system. They want to build an scenarios with data provided through all the activity, and be able to change some parameters before they make the decisión.
For example: A Dynamic analyzer where the systems puts an actual forecast, in which the user can change some parameters (credits the user may extend, or payments the user would pay later, etc.) and automatically the new forecast is build.

Thus, it is important to take into account what the user is expecting when asks for a report.

P.D: For the first two report types, Jasper is a good solution. For the third, I am investigating POI. I let you know something about, soon!

Rob Goris: Welcome to the Openbravo User Experience Lab

noreply@blogger.com (Rob Goris) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:15:52 +0000

Let me introduce myself and the Openbravo UX Lab forum. My name is Rob Goris and I joined Openbravo recently in the role of User Experience Architect. This is a new position at Openbravo and this appointment is a clear sign that the company wants to move towards User Centered Design.

So what is User Experience (UX) and how can we, together, create a world class user experience for our product? UX is defined as the creation of the architecture and interaction models which impact a user's perception of a system and is an umbrella term for the following activities:

Information architecture: conceptual structure and logical organization of information; think navigation, taxonomy, findability
Interaction design: high level design of the application, flows and pages; think wireframes and design concepts
Usability engineering: usability testing, focus groups, heuristic evaluations, questionnaires, essentially everything needed to understand the users and involve them in the design process.
Visual design: the look and feel of the application that includes the page layout, composition, graphics, icons, use of colors, typography

UX can never be done in isolation and that's why we need your voice. You are the ones using our products every day to keep your businesses going and I am sure you have great feedback as to how we can improve usability. This post is an invitation for all of you to share user pain and ideas related to the GUI and usability. I am here to convert your voice into a more user-friendly product.

Occasionally, will also reach out to test new ideas or designs and will ask for your opinions. Open source software is User Feedback Heaven as there is direct access to a large community that shares the common goal of building a world class ERP software.

Welcome to the Openbravo UX Lab forum. I am looking forward to all your feedback. Make sure to speak up!

I can also be reached by email: rob dot goris at openbravo dot com.

Comic courtesy of OK/Cancel(Click to enlarge)

Jordi Mas: Meritocracy levels in Openbravo ERP and POS projects

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:03:03 +0000

In the Openbravo Manifesto that we published in April this year, Openbravo as company leading Openbravo ERP and POS projects committed to a few principles, including meritocracy. Quoting the manifest:

We believe we should gain people's respect and recognition due to our work. We shall always make sure that everybody has access to our open resources on an equal basis and we will accept contributors based on the merit of their work and their skills.

Today we present our meritocracy policy that has the objective of building a meritocracy access system based on community members' reputation. The levels are based on people's technical abilities, skills and shown responsibility. The role names are built on the name of the (b) mark, which we pronounce "obi" (as in letter "o" and letter "b"). On top of providing more responsibility and rights to different services, these levels would be highly visibly and an important indicator of the contributor's reputation within the Openbravo ERP and POS communities.

In the future, these levels will be precomputed automatically from the different Openbravo collaboration sites. Until, this is done, we do maintain the list manually, if you think that you are entitled to be listed please do not hesitate to contact me (jmas at openbravo.com)

Asier Lostalé: New stuff for Openbravo ERP developers

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:27:41 +0000

Recently modularity project has been merged back to Openbravo ERP 2.50 trunk. Apart from the features described within the project, some other useful utilities have been developed, these features are usable from r2.50 by any development. Some of them are:

GenericTree

GenericTree allows to represent an ajax tree for any tree data structure in Openbravo ERP. It draws the user interface for the tree and manages the ajax calls for opening and closing nodes.

GenericTree is an abstract Java class that can be extended by other classes to implement different trees. These subclasses just need to populate a FieldProvider object with the information for the concrete tree. Once this is done in order to show an ajax tree it is only needed to instantiate a subclass.

Let’s see some code:

This is the Java piece of code
ModuleTree tree = new ModuleTree(this); tree.setLanguage(vars.getLanguage()); //Obtains a tree for the installed modules xmlDocument.setParameter(”moduleTree”, tree.toHtml()); //Obtains a box for display the modules descriptions xmlDocument.setParameter(”moduleTreeDescription”, tree.descriptionToHtml());

And here is the HTML side

<tr> <PARAMETER_TMP id=”moduleTree“/> <!– Prints module tree 4 cols –> <td/> <td/> <tr>

…

<tr> <PARAMETER_TMP id=”moduleTreeDescription”/> <!– Prints module tree desc 4 cols –> <td/> <td/> <tr>

In this example ModuleTree class is a GenericTree’s subclass which implements the queries for the tree of modules, creating a new instance of this class and setting the toHTML() in the HTML template will display the User Interface and manage all the ajax requests.

FieldProviderFactory

This class allows to transform any object with setter methods into a FieldProvider object. This is useful to represent this non-FieldProvider object within a structure inside a xmlEngine template.

Here’s the code:

WebServiceImplServiceLocator loc = new WebServiceImplServiceLocator(); WebServiceImpl ws = (WebServiceImpl) loc.getWebService(); Module module = ws.moduleDetail(recordId); ModuleDependency[] dependencies = module.getDependencies(); xmlDocument.setData(”dependencies”, FieldProviderFactory.getFieldProviderArray(dependencies));

In this example ModuleDependency is a class that has setter methods, so to use it to fill a HTML template it is possible to convert it into a FieldProvider using FieldProviderFactory class.

AntExecutor

AntExecutor is able to execute any ant task from any build.xml file. It is also possible to set different loggers, for example a file log or an OBPrintStream which can be used to display the generated log in real time.

This is a basic example that just creates a new AntExecutor for a buil.xml file, adds a task and a property and executes the task.

AntExecutor ant=new AntExecutor(”/path/to/build.xml”); Vector tasks = new Vector(); tasks.add(”apply.modules”); ant.setProperty(”module”, “test1″); ant.runTask(tasks);

Zip

Zip class zips and unzips files.

It is easy to use:

Zip.zip(”/path/to/zip/”, “/file/to.zip”); Zip.unzip(”/file/to/un.zip”, “/path/to/unzip”);

Posted in Openbravo Tagged: developers utilities, modularity, r2.50

Jaime Torre: xeraf

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:03:43 +0000

The Development Environment ID was created to allow merging dictionary changes made by several developers simultaneously. Previously, the Development Environment ID list was centrally maintained by Openbravo.

With the inclusion of UUID in version 2.50, the Development Environment ID is not needed any more. Because of this, Openbravo is no longer going to maintain this list of Development Environment IDs.

However, if you are working on a development of Openbravo ERP in a version prior to 2.50 with several developers, you still need the Developer Environment ID. In this case, you can manage the Development Environment IDs of your project taking into account two things:

Development Environment IDs should be five digit numbers starting by ‘1′ (e.g.: 10001, 10002, 10003).

Assign a different Developer Environment ID to each of the developers in a project. Note that the same ID could be used through different projects.

Please, do not hesitate to visit the developers forum if you have any question or suggestion regarding Openbravo ERP development.

Pablo Sarobe: Participation in 2.50 alpha phase test

noreply@blogger.com (P. Sarobe) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:40:41 +0000

We are in the final stages of the Openbravo 2.50 development cycle and the release is getting ready to enter the alpha phase. Alpha testing will be public and open to the whole community and since we are now only a few days away from that milestone, it is time to ask for community volunteers to help us with testing.

The process is going to change from previous releases:

An alpha version will be published once a week. The community will have the release at the same time as the QA team ready to be tested
During the week the engineering team will fix the bugs
At the end of the week a new release will be published
We will not be producing installers at this time but we will be producing a virtual appliance with both Openbravo ERP and its stack pre-installed. This will simplify deployment. Alternatively, you can install on your native hardware building from sources from the alpha tags.

The goal of this alpha phase test is to validate that:

The product installs from sources and works on all the most important operating systems (we will certainly test Linux and Windows but we hope that you will help us in testing other platforms as well)
The product installs from sources and works against both Oracle and PostgreSQL
The product works in the virtual appliance
All the major flows are in working condition
The new features are complete and stable

If you are interested in participating in the alpha testing, you are lucky, now it is very easy so please read the following instructions:

Openbravo brings you a new tool to track the functional testing called TestLink
The URL to access it is: http://tools.openbravo.com:8891/testlink
Click the link New User and after creating the user then login
You will be in the Home page under the Community Sandbox test project
Under the Test Execution section link the option Execute Tests
You will see some filters but only two of them are relevant:
1. Build: The build you are working with that corresponds with the Virtual Appliance or the Tag
2. Assigned to: You must put in blank this combo box otherwise you won't be able to see anything after pressing the button "Apply filter"
Another thing that it is very important is to specify the environment. Please use the text field "Notes/descriptions" to describe the environment. Also please feel free to write what ever you want
After following the steps of the test cases you have to give a result, three options here:
1. Passed: Everything was fine as per the expected results
2. Failed: The execution failed as per the expected results. In this case address a bug in our bug tracker, taking in note the guidelines of how to report a bug. It would be nice if you put the link to the bug in the text field "Notes/descriptions"
3. Blocked: The test case cannot be executed due to an issue that blocks it
Then Press the button "Save execution" and keep going with the rest of the test cases

All testers will receive special support during the alpha cycle and can ask their questions in the "Early Releases Discussion" forum.

I would like to remind you that participation in the testing of a new release is not only a great way to contribute to the Openbravo ERP project but it also has very concrete benefits to you:

It is a great opportunity to make sure that the features you care about are properly working in the new version.
It is a great way to learn all the exciting new features that have been built in 2.50 so that when the version is released in production you are ready to start taking advantage of them in your implementation projects.
It is a great way to establish good relationships with both members of the Openbravo development team and other Community members that will be able to assist you in the future.

We look forward to your continued support to our project and your participation in this important test

Pablo Sarobe

Manel Sarasa: Openbravo hits the millionth download... Yes, we can!

noreply@blogger.com (Manel Sarasa) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:08:28 +0000

What a journey we have undergone since Openbravo opened to the world in April 2006 with its code publication on SourceForge. 2 ½ years later, we are proud to say that thanks to the support of our incredible community of developers, partners, and customers, we've already reached the millionth project download. It's incredible to have achieved this milestone in such a short period, which is a confirmation of the soaring adoption rates of open source, but most importantly of the growing ecosystem fuelling Openbravo ERP and POS solutions.

Undoubtedly, the company is undergoing substantial expansion, with a partner base of 90 worldwide and a growing number of localizations, 20 of which are completed, and another 30+ in progress. Openbravo has become an ERP of reference to such a large ecosystem because, put simply, it offers more value for money. It beats other leading ERP packages due to its lower cost or better adaptation to customer needs for the same budget.

The 1,000,000th download also marks the beginning of a new era with several exciting initiatives that further support and enhance the Openbravo ecosystem:
• Modularity to encourage individual contributions part of Openbravo 2.50
• A new development Forge for Openbravo projects and downloads (to be released soon)
• A range of knowledge-sharing opportunities, and the launch of our global community event, the Openbravo World Conference

All of these actions are to get people to join and participate within the community more easily. So, if you're not already part of this flourishing ecosystem, NOW is the time to get involved with Openbravo, either by contributing to the product, joining our partner network, or by implementing Openbravo in your business so you too can benefit from working with our solutions.

This special day for Openbravo coincides with another special and, judging by the near unanimity of the news, historical day, the election of Mr. Barack Obama as president of the United States of America. Regardless of the political preferences of each, there is no doubt that the arrival of the first African American to chair USA is a fact that breaks barriers, brings hope to those who have not always had a voice and sets the beginning of a new era of change (we hope it will be for the better), similarly to the philosophy that has continuously driven us towards opening the world of ERP's: Yes, change is already happening!

Asier Lostalé: New column in Openbravo ERP prone to merge conflicts

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:24:29 +0000

Recently I’ve added to AD_Column table in Openbravo ERP database the Position column and I’ve commited it to trunk (r8191). This new column stores the physical database order for the columns which will be required by Data Access Layer Project.

This column is mandatory, so when mergeing trunk to project branches it will cause problems in case these projects add new columns. Here I will try to explain who to deal with these problems:

First of all resolve the conflicts as usual in the xml files.
If you have created new columns in your project you will not be able to update your database, so before updating let’s put the new column as not mandatory open src-db/database/model/tables/AD_COLUMN.xml file and change the line <column name="POSITION" primaryKey="false" required="true” type=”DECIMAL” autoIncrement=”false”> to <column name="POSITION" primaryKey="false" required="false” type=”DECIMAL” autoIncrement=”false”>. Now you should be able to update your database.
Your database now contains the columns you’ve added to your project with the position value as null, now you have to populate this value to do it execute:

UPDATE AD_COLUMN C SET POSITION=(SELECT COLUMN_ID FROM USER_TAB_COLUMNS U, AD_TABLE T WHERE T.AD_TABLE_ID = C.AD_TABLE_ID AND TABLE_NAME = UPPER(T.TABLENAME) AND COLUMN_NAME = UPPER(C.COLUMNNAME)) WHERE POSITION IS NULL;

Export now your database to xml files.
Revert the previous modification in src-db/database/model/tables/AD_COLUMN.xml file.
And now you are ready to commit

Posted in Openbravo Tagged: branches, r2.50

Jordi Mas: Help us to get better participating in the Community Hurdle Assessment

noreply@blogger.com (Jordi Mas) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:12:49 +0000

We have started an initiative to identify the main barriers that people face when joining the Openbravo community and to spot areas of enhancement that can increase Openbravo ERP success.

If you are new to the Openbravo community and you are interested in helping us please check the Community Hurdle Assessment page that contains all the details. Contributing to this initiative you can make Openbravo ERP community an easier place to work with and reduce the entrance barrier of future contributors.

Please, feel free to contact me directly at jmas at openbravo.com if you have any doubt or your are interested in participating. Openbravo will also give a 150 euro Amazon gift certificate to the participants that complete the assessment.

Manel Sarasa: In times of crisis...

noreply@blogger.com (Manel Sarasa) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:33:04 +0000

Dear Openbravo Community,

Over the course of my career, I have personally seen markets from the United States to Australia, from Asia to Latin America; all go through ups and downs that ruin a family retirement, that ruin a business’s future. When markets plunge, everyone can become vulnerable.

I also know, that while certain “fear based” news capture the world’s attention, we must begin to understand what lies beneath for tomorrow. For those with the ability to think long term, there are genuine opportunities that come with the current type market shift:

The opportunity to focus on what’s truly important
The opportunity to cut costs and reduce needless spending
The opportunity to prepare for when the market recovers increasing your competitive position

Above are 3 values any family can apply, but how do they specifically relate to open source, ERPs, and Openbravo? How is the System Integrator going to survive this time period? Let me begin by sharing a few thoughts about the ERP market and Openbravo.

As I look forward I still see an enormous market potential for System Integrators and Openbravo Partners. Analysts estimate that the underserved ERP market for SMB is worth USD 30 to 50 billion worldwide.

The next question becomes, are customers thinking about investing at this time? Keeping market emotions aside, the fact is that Openbravo leads steadily continue to increase (even in the last weeks). This shows that end customers see the opportunity of our unique offering: get your ERP at a lower cost, or invest these savings for a customized solutions. In this market, this could mean implementing now to save money and further customizing when the market turns.

A solution that is by definition better since it allows customers to focus their investments on the aspects that really matter (adapting a solution to their needs) and support (Openbravo Network) your business, instead of just paying licenses. A solution that is better and can be more easy to discover in economic downturns where budgets are even more limited. And in this case, let me just give you a couple of types of leads that have increased in the last weeks:

Leads coming from larger companies which already have an ERP at headquarters. They switch to our solution instead of extending SAP. For these companies, they receive a fully customized ERP, fully adapted to their needs, and without the licensing costs.
Public Administration sector interest is also growing as fast as Openbravo. In times of crisis governments maintain or even increase their spending on technology, and this holds true for open source technology. Looking in my backyard, Openbravo has been supporting the growth of city halls arround the world, Public Tourism and also become a requirement for companies attempting to bid on government contracts.

The outlook shows that companies will need to keep critical IT projects going. As a result of the market condition, they will be forced to look for new alternatives. When they do, companies will find products do to the same or more, but at a lower cost. My message is that when companies search, they will find that an open source solution is the professional ERP alternative they have been looking for. I truly believe this alternative is, and will continue to be Openbravo.

Paolo Juvara: Openbravo ERP 2.50: The First Step Towards Green

noreply@blogger.com (Paolo Juvara) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:42:56 +0000

The production release of Openbravo ERP 2.40 is still fresh in our mind and yet we are already in the final stages of the build phase for the next release, Openbravo ERP 2.50.

2.50 is going to be a remarkable release for many reasons. One of them is that it marks the beginning of the transformation towards the next generation technology open source ERP platform, Openbravo Green.

We have been working on Openbravo Green for well over 18 months. The original New Platform - White Paper and Design Principles for Openbravo Green articles were published in our wiki in early March 2007 and they sparked a very active debate in our Community in the Openbravo Green forum, which was launched a few days later.

One of the major issues with this project was how to tranform it from a concept into a production feature. In fact, a complete redesign of an established platform is always very problematic: from one side, the initial investment required is very high; from the other, the limited resources of the development organization are always pulled towards meeting the urgent requirements of the community using the existing product. In addition to that, if not properly managed, the big bang introduction of a new platform could be very disruptive to existing users who need to learn the new tools and migrate their legacy extensions to the new technology.

After several months of debate, we came to the conclusion that, rather than looking at Green as a discontinuity in our product development, the rigth approach for us was to implement it using an evolutionary approach based on coexistance: elements of the new platform are to be introduced progressively in every release, while making sure that the existing platform continues to be operational to support the existing application.
In other words, we stopped looking at Openbravo Green as a mythical future release, and we started adding capabilities of "the next generation platform" in the normal release cycle.

There are several advantages to this approach:

Early delivery of the benefits of the new technology: every new technology feature that we introduce can provide benefits from day one, and there is no need to wait for the long pole to take advantage of it;
Minimal or no disruption to existing users: since we continue to support our existing technology, our community's investment in the Openbravo ERP project is protected;
Risk reduction: any possible problem with the new technology can be detected and corrected early.

We have since been quietly working behind the scenes to make this vision a reality and 2.50 is going to unveil the first step in our path to Green.

In Openbravo ERP 2.50, in fact, we are introducing many of the foundational elements that were explored as part of the original Green project. The most significant one is the introduction of the Data Access Layer (DAL), which leverages Hibernate to provide a Java abstraction layer on top of the relational datamodel and which provides centralized data access and persistence. While DAL provides a better alternative to SQLC, SQLC will be preserved in 2.50 and all of our existing code continues to use it to access the database. At the same time, DAL can provide many benefits to our users starting from this release, including:

A very productive tool to write Java-based business logic and extensions on top of Openbravo ERP;
A full layer of restful web services that allow to manipulate 100% of the Openbravo ERP transactions;
A way to develop custom user interfaces decoupled from the product back end leveraging either Java or any SOA enabled technology.

Another Green element adopted in 2.50 is Quartz which will replace the home grown legacy scheduler as part of the Process Scheduler project. In 2.50, this project provides a much more robust infrastructure to schedule automatic jobs as well as the ability to invoke any Openbravo process from external systems through web services. For future releases, Quartz also offers a very solid basis to improve the user experience and productivity by allowing scheduling the background execution of any report and process directly from the Openbravo interface.

Finally, in 2.50 we are improving the overall architecture of our platform by allowing the development and distribution of independent solutions through the Modularity project. While this is a topic large enough to deserve its own post, I would like to point out that this is the first step towards the separation between platform and ERP that we had identified as a design principle 18 months ago.

As significant as it is, Openbravo ERP 2.50 is just the first milestone towards our evolution to Green. Future steps include:

The introduction of more powerful abstaction layers such as business objects in addition to relational tables;
The conversion of our legacy code to use DAL instead of SQLC;
The elimination of PL/SQL in favor of Java;
The adoption of a BPEL and human workflow engine;
The introduction of a search engine;
and much more...

How fast can we complete this journey? It is difficult to say. The answer to this question, in fact, depends on how many resources we will be able to dedicate to this technological transformation; that needs to be a trade off with other priorities such as the continued expansion of the functional footprint of the solution and the improvement of the user experience.

If you would like to accelerate our delivery, you can always help us out by contributing to the project.

Starting from today, however, we can be sure that the journey is under way and that, slowly but surely, we will reach our destination.

Global Partner Services: Consulting experiences

noreply@blogger.com (Eugeni Vives) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:13:16 +0000

The successful implementation of business applications like Openbravo solutions largely depends on a dedicated team of knowledgeable staff. It entails customer-wide commitment, openness to change, business and product knowledge, good management and planning, and guidance from experienced people. In such a complex context, having the correct and complete set of consulting skills within your team is a determining factor towards successful project completion.

If you are an Openbravo partner and are working on a complex implementation of Openbravo ERP or POS and need experienced consulting or an expert in a particular area, we can provide you with the person with the right profile, whether business, functional or technical, to help you achieve project requirements. Our consultants have already completed numerous implementations and are highly qualified. Specialized Consulting is a high value-added service, available only for Openbravo partners, which allows you to maximize product benefits and project team performance, enabling you to face any challenges within your customer implementation that may arise.

From definition to configuration, Specialized Consulting Services span the full life-cycle of an implementation and ensure you achieve your business goals:

Evaluation Workshop
Project Management Support
Subject Matter Experts
ERP Deployment Strategy
Requirement Definition & GAP Analysis
Functional Design Support & Review
Customizing Assessment
Upgrading Strategy
Existing Openbravo ERP Audit

Moreover, all of our Consulting team has in depth practical knowledge of the Openbravo implementation framework. This is a model that has proven to deliver return on investment quickly and effectively. This framework provides an understandable and scalable guide for Openbravo implementation projects. It includes our recommended five step Openbravo implementation roadmap, as well as a specific methodology for project management. This useful tool is completed with a set of best implementation practices. Working together with our experts will allow you to be trained on the job on this successful methodology and to apply it autonomously in the future.

Here is what partners have said about using Openbravo’s Specialized Consulting Services:

Because we were implementing our first project, we wanted to make sure that everything would run smoothly. Openbravo’s specialized consulting team gave us the methodological, business and technological reinforcement we needed through on-the job training, which turned out to be invaluable to the project’s success. After this experience, we are now confident in becoming a key player in the industry.
- César Alonso, TicTech Consulting CEO

Openbravo’s senior consultant gave us in-depth knowledge about implementation methodology which helped us minimize the risks associated with our project delivery. Because of Openbravo’s Consulting Services, we were able to optimize our sales potential while gaining experience in making proposals for the future
- Julio Bleda, Cleartic Founder

Go professional! Ensure your customer implementations success!

Eugeni Vives
Global Partner Services

Josep Mitjà: Disaster recovery with Openbravo SMB Network

noreply@blogger.com (Josep Mitjà) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:38:34 +0000

The fact that Openbravo ERP is a mission critical application means that it is very important to have a disaster recovery plan.

Usually, and certainly more frequently than it should be, this type of plan is just an afterthought. Quite frankly, it is also very common that the recovery process is not fully tested or documented.

In those rare cases where the plan is properly laid out, System Integrators have generally required a large number of consulting hours to craft it and clients are rarely happy with the expenditure this entails.

Luckily, Openbravo SMB Network includes a nice functionality that offers this facility without the need to develop any complex process. Using the Administration Console, system back-ups can be scheduled regularly. These back-ups can be done against a remote file server for increased reliability.

In case of disaster, a simple restore process enables you to have a fully functional system up and running again in a matter of hours. Another neat benefit of the Openbravo SMB Network appliance.

Go Professional! Ensure the systems you are managing are properly protected.

Asier Lostalé: Subversion 1.5 merge problems

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:34:49 +0000

Last days we have had several problems trying to merge two branches using subversion. I wanted to merge trunk to modularity but I always obtained this error:

svn: Working copy path 'lib/runtime' does not exist in repository

This happened using any merge command (svn merge modularity, svn merge trunk@r1 trunk@r2…).
It seems to be related with subversion issue 3067 and the only way to make it work was checking out the svn branch that solves this issue compiling it and using it to do the merge. The steps to do that are:

1) svn co http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/branches/issue-3067-deleted-subtrees/ svn-mod
2) cd svn-mod
3) ./autogen.sh
4) ./configure
5) make

After doing the merge using that svn client the working copy cannot be used anymore with the old svn client.

Posted in Openbravo Tagged: branches, scm, subversion

Manel Sarasa: Calling all Openbravo Partners!

noreply@blogger.com (Manel Sarasa) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:18:04 +0000

It is with great pleasure that I announce our first Partner Conference Call, taking place this Wednesday and Thursday:

English call: 16:00 to 18:00, October 9th
Spanish call: 16:00 to 18:00, October 10th

This new initiative will bring Openbravo closer to its partners, while providing additional marketing and business support to help them build a stronger practice. This bi-monthly Conference Call is targeted towards our partners’ CEOs, and will serve the following objectives:

Share new offerings/assets which help guarantee partner success
Learn from fellow partner success stories and experiences
Cover market alignment and improving sales approach (e.g. key client segments to focus, product pitching, …)
Ensure regular communication and feedback and identify new collaboration opportunities

This is yet another initiative demonstrating our commitment towards the Openbravo ecosystem, for which our partners hold an important role. Because we know that our success relies on that of the ecosystem, we believe that with increased collaboration and communication we can all achieve superior results, which holds true for all community members. That is why we strongly encourage all of our partners to attend every conference call to maximize their business potential.

So, I hope to talk to all of you at the conference. Details for the conference will be send to Openbravo partners in the next days.

For those of you who are not part of Openbravo’s global network of partners, the Partners Conference Call is yet another great reason to join. Please do remember that our Partnership value proposition is aimed for companies which want to exploit the big business opportunity around our products by building a large business practice in coordination with our company. Main discussion topics are business driven since as you can imagine general product related issues are fully managed in the open and properly discussed in our already available Community Channels.