Difference between revisions of "Road Map"

Revision as of 12:42, 21 September 2006

Introduction

Adempiere is a community driven project which develops and supports an open source business solution of the same name, that delivers Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and Supply Chain Management functionality. The Adempiere project was created in September 2006 after a long running disagreement between ComPiere Inc., the developers of Compiere™, and the community that formed around that project. The community believed Compiere Inc. placed too much emphasis on the open source nature of the project, rather than the community nature of the project, and after an impassioned discussion decided to split from Compiere™ giving birth to the Adempiere project. The project name comes from the Italian word meaning 'to fulfill' but with additional context of "to complete, reach, practice, perform the duties of, or free (discharge), it also means to honor and respect", which was felt was very appropriate to what the project wished to achieve.

Background

The true origin of the Adempiere Road Map is in the hundreds of requests for features, bugs and user developments that have been posted in the Compiere™ SourceForge forums in the last 5 years. This inventory of unresponsed wishes quickly evolved into a development framework for the Adempiere project.

In a hectic debate started on September 1st 2006 and in just two weeks (Read the historic debate), an instantly created community not only decided on starting a fork, a product name, a basic structure for the project but also a short term roadmap for the project.

This roadmap as described here had to strike a balance between rapidly releasing a version addressing some urgently required fixes and at the same time enhancing the functionality in such a way that it increases the perceived value of the solution. On the other hand, these very first releases would have to address the licensing of the precedent work from Compiere™ and some commercial components included in the original solution, namely the pdf library and the Oracle™ database.

Why to do Adempiere?

• Really stable , performance, flexibility, easy to use, facility of maintenance and scalability product

• Expand functionality footprint to be on par to world class ERP solutions

• The change of technology from a client-server to a more modern: three layers application

• User Interface focused in an easy use, intuitive, attractive and well Organized

• The necessity of a real community where it is possible to integrate the others job and to collaborate in the development in a scheduled way

• Tools to upgrade, migrate and apply bug corrections and improvements

• Use of open source tools to collaboration and development

• To improve the product, based on the community necessities.

• A 100% open source

What are the benefits?

• A better product

• A project with vision and better direction

• One road map clearly defined

• A real Community

• A fast evolution of the product

• A useful application for the final customer

Adempiere release strategy

Adempiere version numbers follow a longstanding tradition. Each version has three numbers, I.e., X.Y.Z. The "X" is only incremented when a really significant change happens, one that makes software written for one version no longer operate correctly on the other. The "Y" tells you which development "series" you are in. A stable version will always have an even number in this position, while a development version will always have an odd number. The "Z" specifies which exact version you have, and it is incremented on every release.

The development series is the code that the Adempiere developers are actively working on, which is always available for public viewing, testing, and even use, although production use is not recommended! This is part of the "open source development" method. Eventually, the development series (i.e. 3.1.x) will become the stable one (i.e. 3.2.0) and a new stable series will then be established, and a new development series begun (i.e. 3.3.x). Or, if any really major changes happen, it might become 4.0.0 instead, and a 4.1.x series begun.

Adempiere 3.1.0

Goals

• Find and fix bugs

• Totally open source project

Release would include the following components:

• Compiere 253b

• Migration tools ADCK

• Free PDF

• Jasper Report or Pentaho integration

• Oracle & Oracle XE

• Migration Script 253a to 253b

Adempiere Tasks

Adempiere 3.2.0

Goals

• Stable version without bugs

• Intensive Quality Assurance process

Release would include the following components:

• Compiere 253b

• Migration tools ADCK

• Free PDF

• Jasper Report or Pentaho integration

• Oracle & Oracle XE

• Migration Script 253a to 253b

Adempiere 3.3.0

Goals

• Postgresql, MySQL & manufacturing functionality Integration

Release would include the following components:

• Migration script Adempiere 3.2.0 to Adempiere 3.3.0 (Oracle,PostgreSQL,MySQL)

• PostgreSQL & MySQL integration

• Manufacturing functionality

Adempiere 3.4.0

Goals

• Stable version without bugs

• Intensive Quality Assurance process

Release would include the following components:

• Migration script Adempiere 3.3.0 to Adempiere 3.4.0 (Oracle,PostgreSQL,MySQL)

• PostgreSQL & MySQL integration

• Manufacturing functionality

Adempiere 3.5.0

Goals

• Extra functionality integration

Release would include the following components:

• Migration script Adempiere 3.4.0 to Adempiere 3.5.0

• Cashflow

• Payroll

• Fixed Assets

Adempiere 3.6.0

Goals

• Stable version without bugs

• Intesive Quality Assurance process

Release would include the following components:

• Cashflow

• Payroll

• Fixed Asset

Adempiere 3.7.0

Goals

• Improve the architecture of Adempiere

Release would include the following components:

• New Persistency machine
  • Proposal:
    • To use Persistence JPA Entity Management Hibernate EntityManager or TopLink Implementation
  • Requirements
    • Independence of the DB (Supported Databases Hibernate EntityManager , TopLink)
    • Better Persistency model
    • JPA Based on a Standard
    • Powerful query language
    • Impact in the speed of the development
    • Increase in the Performance via cache

• Business Rules Engine Integration
  • Proposal:
    • Use the Java Standards JSR 223 Scripting APIs i.e. BSF & AOP, the use of a script language no typed facilitates the interaction with every application components, and every persistent class must implement an inspector to validate if there is a Business Rule in the Application Dictionary.
    • The AfterSave , BeforeSave , AfterDelete , BeforeDelete methods must be rewrited with Inspection classes.
  • Requirements:
    • Modify the Business Logic without changes in the source code, and online.
    • The Business Rule must be in the Application Dictionary.

• Report Generator Integration
  • Proposal
    • Integrate Pentaho Report Design Wizard in the system core
    • Report Design Report customization using Pentaho Report Design
  • Requirements:
    • An easy to use , User Interface
    • Use a Wizard to build new Reports
    • Drill Down & Drill Across
    • Charts
    • Export reports to several formats (HTML,PDF,OpenOffice)
    • A query language without creating views previously

• Light Client AJAX
  • Proposal
    • We want to create a new user interface, Using AJAX technology the client will be communicated with the server using SOAP technology.
    • After reviewing a lot of AJAX solutions , we believe the best option is to use :
      • GWT Google Toolkit Widgets Gallery Demo
      • Echo2 Demo
  • Requirements
    • A User interface focused in the easy, intuitive use , attractive and well organized.
    • Keep just one application client.
    • The client has to be really light
    • Engine to build maintenance screens based on the AD
    • Just get the information that the user is asking for
    • Capture high volume of data in a simple, multiple and mixed way.
    • Universal client (any internet browser)

Adempiere 4.0.0

Goals