Flex + Talend = A.T.P. For Open Source ERP
A.T.P (Available to promise) is a vector describing how many units of a specific product are available, at any given time in the future, to cover customer orders. A.T.P. is a powerful tool for both the logistic team, in charge of making sure that enough stock is available to satisfy future customer demand, as well as anyone fronting a customer, and has to provide a reliable customer inquiry regarding possible supply dates.
The A.T.P vector takes into account the amount of currently available stock, future supply (from manufacturing or procurement) and future demand (sales order, internal orders etc.). The A.T.P. quantity decreases due to customer orders (and possibly other transactions), and increases as new stock is available, through purchasing, manufacturing or customer returns.
I planned to provide a flash-based A.T.P. ‘viewer’ for open source ERP systems for some time now, and surprisingly enough, I’ve found this feature request on Openbravo’s issue tracker. So I decided to implement a version of A.T.P. that would run as a stand-alone flash application ( which can be easily embedded into your company’s portal).
But I wanted to develop something that would be generic enough so it can be used as an A.T.P. viewer for any open source ERP system (or any ERP system for that matter). I decided to use Talend as middleware. Talend is a powerful data processing tool, and provides one important feature - you can create ‘data services’ that read data from your ERP system, and expose it through a service call to any consuming client.
The client was using flash technology. The front-end was developed using Flex, and it is completely independent of the back-end system. It calls a couple of services, created by Talend, that provide the data used by the A.T.P. viewer. There is still further development required to make the A.T.P. viewer robust, but it is already useful in several scenarios.
I plan to release the whole thing as open source and would love to get help from anyone with relevant knowledge - more on that in future posts.
In the meantime, you can take a look at the A.T.P. viewer in the following recorded demo.
Impaortant! - the data (customer orders, production orders etc.) used in the recorded demo is sample data provided by Openbravo. The dates of the transactions are from 2006 and 2007. A.T.P. always looks forward, into the future. I had to use this data because I do not have access to a live system. So only for purpose of this demo, we assume the date now is somewhere during the year 2005, so all transactions occurring in 2006/7/8 are future transactions.
Open Source ATP Viewer Demo - click image below to view demo
The Open Source ERP Community Challenge By OSS ERP Guru
I would like to challenge the open source ERP community today.
A few days ago I got a great email from one of my readers. I really liked what I read as the email covers very well many of the questions and concerns that are raised today by anyone who is looking into open source ERP - either for his own business or for his customers. I will post the email as-is. The mail raises some issues in regards to support but also asks ‘which open source ERP solution best answers these requirements’.
The challenge is to provide the reader with enough information about the projects that will demonstrate the feasibility of open source ERP solutions for small-medium business with the business requirements listed below.
Start Quote:
From my experience the #1 problem with ERP/CRM opensource solutions in general
is the lack of/bad communication via email, their bad/slow forums and poorly
implemented websites. (OpenBravo seems the best so far for communications) If they “shouted out” a little bit about supporting key business features they would have customers lined up around the block. More examples and StepbyStep Tutorials to help the “average” user. Sorry for the rant.
TinyERP Source Published - It All Started Here
When I first started open source ERP Guru, I was hoping it could have positive impact on the open source ERP community and I am happy that it started to pay off - TinyERP opened its source code to the general public!.
The move was initiated by one of my readers, Raphael, who posted a request on TinyERP’s forum,asking the project team to consider again the release of Tiny’s source code , citing my blog in that forum post. A couple of days later, the source was released in an announcement published on the same forum thread.
I am very happy that I had some part in making TinyERP’s source code available. I hope my reviews of the different open source ERP solutions will cause more projects to take the path TinyERP took and publish all their source code for free,unrestricted use.
I first noticed what was going on by reading comments posted by Raphael and Yogi(?), TinyERP community members. I would like to take the opportunity to thank them both for their detailed comments.
The rest of this post will answer the issues they both raised. I strongly suggest reading their comments as they provide an interesting insight into the burning issues surrounding open source ERP projects. I hope other projects’ community members will provide their insight as well.
OFBiz Goodies - Going Beyond The Core
Apache OFbiz project is a relatively new open source ERP solution. Being the new kid on the block has its advantages - it allows you to easily integrate unique functionality around your core software that provides added value for your users. More mature software packages sometimes find it difficult to fully adapt to modern trends as they feel it might damage their stable core, a core they worked for years to improve. Also, it is sometimes technically impossible to add new technologies to existing software.
OFbiz took advantage of that fact and incorporate into their open source ERP offering several unique features,extending its core ERP functionality, which can be found in very few ERP solutions. This post will present some of these features - Embedded BI(Business Inelegance), eBay and Google Base interfaces and supports for the Oagis standards.
Read more
Why Open Source ERP?
One of our readers, Chris, commenting on Open Source ERP Activity Trends, had some very good questions and I decided to answer them, one by one, in a dedicated post.
Q: Is Opensource integral to the success of companies like Compiere and Openbravo, or is it more a marketing tool?
A: I’ll start by answering the latter part of the question - definitely NO!, it’s not a marketing tool. All open source projects start with a genuine intention of making things better. Programmers grouping together to write a piece of software for no money, usually in their spare time (after working 10 hours for their commercial employer) don’t think about marketing. They only think about writing the smartest,cleanest,coolest software ever written. And many such projects yield some the best software ever written - the Linux kernel, The Apache web server,the Firefox browser.
Read more
Open Source ERP Projects Activity Trends
One of the most important evaluation criteria for open source ERP is project activity. The Sourceforge graveyard is full of open source projects skeletons. When you measure a projects activity, the most important thing to measure is trends, or the rate of change in the parameters you measure.
In the last few days, I have been collecting data from the Sourceforge statistics RSS. The following graph displayes the number of downloads per day for the most popular open source ERP projects (this is still Beta so numbers might vary):
Please remember that the statistics were not checked thoroughly so actual numbera might vary!.
Open Source ERP Solutions To Consider
If you read my post 3 Core Business Processes Open Source ERP Must Support you already know that there are at least 402 open source software projects listed as ERP solutions in Sourceforge. You also know what are the core scenarios a real ERP solution should support.
One of Open Source ERP Guru’s main objectives is to provide valuable information for companies looking into ERP solutions in general and open source ERP solutions in particular, and the first thing to do is to narrow the list of 402 down to a more manageable number.
The following is a list of open source ERP solutions that can be called ‘true’ ERP, are open source and (at least partly) freely available:
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