Road Map

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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 unresponded wishes quickly evolved into a development framework for the ADempiere project.

In a furious 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 aspires 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 ADempiere? We chose ADempiere, making it the Open Source ERP/CRM/SCM of choice.

  • Truly stable, high performance, flexible, easy to use, facility of maintenance and scalability in the product application
  • Expanding functionality footprint to be on par to other world class ERP solutions
  • Technological jump from a client-server to a more modern, N-tier application
  • User Interface which is easy to use, intuitive, attractive and well organized
  • Collaboration of a real community where it is possible to integrate everyone's contributions and catalyse further development
  • Tools to test, upgrade, migrate and apply bug corrections or source improvements
  • Use of state-of-the-art open source tools
  • To improve the product, based on the global user-community covering a myriad of verticals
  • 100% Open Source, free of license supported by Open Documentation, Open Support and a not-for-profit ADempiere Council


What are the benefits?

  • A better application for an exploding market
  • A project with the right vision and better direction
  • A road map clearly defined
  • A real Community that is thriving and responsive
  • A fast evolution of the product
  • A useful application customisable for the individual business

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.

List of incomplete (fictitious) functionality that can be found in Compiere menus:

Functionality Description Sponsor Developer
POS
Substitute Product and Related Product
Bank Statement Matcher
Report View Column Replacement
Drop Shipments if you use this now it actually causes data corruption!
RMA Customer returns
Replenishment of BOM tries to buy BOM instead of parts
Replication
Purchase requisition approval
Label Printer functional in our project; lofx
Bids
Reservations (of stock) aren't really reservations!
Package Details on Shipments do not seem to do anything.... of use anyway!?
Withholding ? I don't know if we must include it here.
Knowledgebase is not functional
Unrealized gain and loss not calculated using outstanding amount
Some windows show the button "print" it actually just print an screenshot Examples: info menus and view accounting application

Special Note : It was also mentioned in sourceforge forums the need of making a complete and serious security audit to Compiere.

New desired functionality

Functionality Description Sponsor Developer
Request e-mail collector
Serialisation The assets aspect is good but the creation and use of serialised product makes it not very useful. You realy need to be able to mass receive or ship. You also need to be able to put quantities other than one on the sales & invoice documents but have the shipment/receipt itemise which numbers!
UOM opposite conversion The conversion - units of measure and currency too are very messy to setup... once one conversion is defined the opposites should be automatic.
Warehouse Location Not missing functionality, but it works great to create virtual warehouses within a main warehouse ... but as a "bin" within a warehouse it doesn't strike me as particularily useful!
Standard reports That businesses use be available as default in ADempiere. Probably localization subprojects, standard reports can be different in each country.
Year end closing Income summary and retained earning is setup but not use
Fixed Asset
Customer Statement of Account Showing: previous balance, charges, credits, ending balance

ADempiere 3.1.0

Goals

  • Find and fix bugs
  • Totally open source project


Release would include the following components:

  • Compiere 253b
  • API Plugging and Wizard Migration Management System.
    • Proposal:
      • Create a Tool to do migrations based on XML Formats, so that version migration will be easier.
      • Improve the tools created by Marco, Trifon y Rob
      • Use the DdlUtils Apache(http://db.apache.org/ddlutils/) project libraries for this propouse.
    • Requirements
      • Maintain the Application Dictionary updated
      • New version migration
      • New components integration
      • Bugs Correction Application
      • Export and Import the Data Dictionary
      • Export and Import Entity Data (Client)
      • Delete entities (Client)
      • Wizard to create new windows
  • Free PDF
  • Jasper Report 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
  • API Plugging and Wizard Migration Management System.
  • Free PDF
  • Jasper Report 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 4.1.0

Goals

  • Improve the architecture of ADempiere

Release would include the following components:

  • 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 :
    • 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
      • Programming language JAVA

ADempiere 4.2.0

Goals

  • Stable version without bugs
  • Intesive Quality Assurance process

Release would include the following components:

See also