Back from OpenDays 2014

Back from OpenDays 2014

Link to you tube videos index is already posted. I suppose slides will follow.

Version 8 should be in RC in July 

•         New API (ORM)
•         CMS and e-commerce
•         New front-end views (Odoo dev will be more and more HTML crafting…)
•         New warehouse management (quants, routes, evaluation and retrieval method)
•         Gamification, tutorial
•         New tooling (gitHub based)
•         Many more small improvements on POS, surveys, marketing, mass-mailing

Strategy analysis

1) More marketing

-        Odoo has appointed a Chief Marketing Office, so the new brand, the logo etc. OpenERP claimed they were not doing marketing but in fact was doing some, Odoo now assumes this DNA change.

-        Note their plan is IMHO smart marketing as it includes developer marketing (api docs, how-to , moving to gitHub etc). Good move.

2) CMS , e-commerce, website, more users

There are much more web sites than erp instances. As open-source business is commonly based on the fremium model (only a tiny percentage of users pay for the software). The priority is ‘more users’. Having back-end and front-end integrated makes many things simpler (if you trust the security inside the system).

3) Direct sales

Well the Sass approach is direct sales, quick start methodology is direct sales so is renewal team, direct sales team etc…

The enterprise contract is support / maintenance / migration, their service offering is fixed price service for implementation, they also provide data import, web custom design.

Although they claim to be interested in only very small projects their demonstrated business case (20 employees in French speaking Belgium) is a nice company… They target small, big and finally medium market... well I think everything is the word.

Currently they don’t officially propose customization. But the fact they allow in 8 to deploy custom data modules and several times they mentioned loading custom modules on the Saas as something being evaluated, make me thinking that they don’t because of technical limitations that will be lifted off sooner or later…

Going direct requires that good accounting localization is built-in… They announced that 9 will include around 8 complete standard localizations. I guess they will start by Belgium (obvious), France probably Switzerland….

In summary, better the software is, less they need partners, more they will go direct. 

Partners must therefore think their strategy based on Odoo approach:

•   have your clients (don’t expect leads);
• build differentiator with software outside the Odoo scope;
•  verticalize out of the main street erp activities;
•  fork (small word, big work).

As stated by a colleague ‘your competitor is your best friend that’s the magic of open-source’. So is it between the editor and the partners…

OCA – Community

We had a great time at the first general assembly of the Odoo Community Association. Grouping contributing voices is a way to get a bit attention from Odoo, developing alternative migration tool and complimentary modules is a good insurance to keep the software open-source and a great place to work for independent integrator.  

Last words

I cannot forget the great times with friends and colleagues. It is always a pleasure to meet and party with you guys ! See you next year !

OpenDAYS 2014 - link to the video

Back fro the Odoo (formerly OpenERP) Open days:

here is a link to all the you tube videos :

https://lists.launchpad.net/openerp-community/msg05952.html

Our KB project - going to Drupal

Very often we exchange tips with colleagues and partners. Things like do you have an example in OpenERP of a search / function field etc

Simply, we exchanges these by e-mail. Best of them go in mail folders.

When working on windows I am using OneNote (great MS office app with IMHO no open-source close equivalent).

I think these e-mails represent valuable material. Good for us during projects, but may be good for other people. So I decided to setup a knowledge-base web site where we can easily store and publish tips and code snippet.

My intention is to use Drupal instead of my usual Joomla. There are 2 keys reasons:

• Taxonomy : in Joomla the section/category is limited and makes impossible to classify articles. World is not a 2 levels tree - n level (Joomla 2.5) is not better. What I am waiting for since at 7 years: be able to put 1 article in multiple categories... E.G python / openerp / query / partner etc
• Front-editing : I just want to be able to login and change , cut and paste articles directly. The separation between the site and the admin may give security feeling for a classical site but is clear not appropriate for a community sharing site. 

Installing Drupal 7 is as easy as with Joomla.

Creating content-type is also easy to manage. In Drupal 7 the so called CCK is now a core module. One click and you are done.

However my first snippet post was disappointing... All the alignments are lost. Well for python samples with indent being semantically import the result was not that bad.

2 google search later? I found a Geshi filter module. Well a drupal module using a PHP library called GeSHI.

http://qbnz.com/highlighter/index.php

Much better than simply keeping indentation. It hilight source code syntax with colors for an incredible number of languages.


This is were  hughe communities of coder are incredibly good - thanks to all Drupaler and PHP guys and of course the GeSHI autors - you are great and you did my day !

openerp fields.py - paradise of extensibility

Here is an extract of fields.py one of the openerp kernel file:

class _column(object):
   
.....

    def __init__(self, string='unknown', required=False, readonly=False, domain=None, context=None, states=None, priority=0, change_default=False, size=None, ondelete=None, translate=False, select=False, manual=False, **args):
      ...
       
        for a in args:
            if args[a]:
                setattr(self, a, args[a])
...

This last for loop is programmer paradise. It simply means you can create any field and add directly data to the field definition like a qualifier or anything you need in the constructor.

Simply cool, elegant and efficient !

OpenERP - Open Upgrade

Following a tweet I discovered this initiative

https://launchpad.net/openupgrade-addons

To be clear, the migration service from OpenERP is cheap and without competition. Migration of ERP at a fix low price remains unique. The value of OpenERP enterprise is clear: fixed price and increased functionality every year. Unique.

However this paid services might be a problem for very small business, non-profit and verticalisation market (more open-object than openerp). It is one of the reason some people turn to Tryton (an- openerp-fork-that-may-one-day-have-a-web-client-but-web-is-not-important-because-we-have-gtk).

The fact custom modules are not part of the migration per say (or you pay more to get them converted/migrated) leave anyway an area for an alternate market.

I don't expect this to be commercial ready, but can be an help for people ready to spend some time in custom migration !

Please note... I haven't spend a second looking at this migration code... just in case ! So don't be foolish and try migrating your live erp.

Latest openerp all in one for windows ...

remember http://nightly.openerp.com !

Using nginx as a proxy to gunicorn / openerp

Following the by now best practices with 6.1, I am switching my prod and demo configruation to gunicorn. 

However, it is also recommended to setup a front-end to your server in order to make if faster and more robust.

 

Installing nginx on Ubuntu is easy as :

 

sudo apt-get nginx

setting up the server to proxy the gunicorn/ openerp, requires to add a site configuration in nginx. Here is a minimal version (it works but it contains no safety nor optimisation) :

 

server {

  listen 80;

  server_name demo.xxxx.be;

  location / {

    proxy_pass http://localhost:8069;

  }

}

See nginx.org for more info !

6.1 technical update

Good stuff

http://www.slideshare.net/openobject/openerp-61-web-framework-tutorial

http://www.slideshare.net/openobject/openerp-61-framework-changes

OpenERP using multi-processors with gunicorn

Due to Python limitation (aka GIL), OpenERP is basically single processor powered !

Starting 6.1, OpenERP is a wsgi application. Provided you use a good wsgi container you can now
benefit from all capabilities of your hardware.

Basic stuff:

easy_install gunicorn
easy_install psutil

Update the gunicorn.conf.py (db host, etc)

gunicorn openerp:wsgi.core.application -c gunicorn.conf.py

gunicorn provided you the ability to manage your worker process making openerp more reliable.

Config info for optimization etc at gunicorn.org

Enjoy !

Welcome to the Postgres magazine

When I decided to move to OpenERP, I had to move also to supporting technologies. Python of course (on which I still have a mixed feeling...) and Postgres.

Just one sentence : I love Postgres. It is enterprise ready, robust, extensible it is SQL and now noSQL etc etc

So join me and read pgmag.org

http://pgmag.org !

Community days - some links

I think presentations are worth looking at...

Presentations: http://slidesha.re/9zuI5o.
Pictures of the event: http://on.fb.me/J3Sk9p
Tweets during the event: http://bit.ly/HQImsU

Back from community days - OpenERP version 7.0

Here is a very short summary of the community days 2012. It is for sure not complete !

Version 7 :
- continue the interface improvement for better usability (e.g search screen, many2one field).
- simple EDI (not the EDI standard) exchange between apps and OpenERP instances.
- new, more object oriented API.
-continue improvement on the POS. In summary the POS paltform will be Google Chrome (because of better local storage capability).

Version 6 : Great news for those running version 6.0 -  they don't need to leave their Long Term Supported release to get the greatest benefit of 6.1. The web client (and also the outlook plugin) will be back-ported for 6.0. this should be available in April.

Release management: monthly release are gone, the integration and build will be done on a daily basis. This means that what you can download from openerp.com will change almost every days...

Of course they were a lot of very good technical presentations  (web client, pos, q-web, API, Gunicorn, file,). I also attended one excellent presentation from Akretion concerning the e-commerce connectors... great work (but still I don't think I want to put my hands in Magento).

The last day was partners only, great opportunities to hear about business oriented  topics (support, out-of-the-box project,...).

Automating OpenERP backup on windows

Unattended backup is not compatible with prompt for password. Here is a 0 cent workaround...

set PGPASSWORD=openpgpwd
pg_dump -U openpg -f mybackupfile mydbname

Enjoy !

Deploying OpenERP Server with Gunicorn (draft)

Also some good stuff in this presentation about wsgi, load balancing etc with OpenERP...

http://thu.openerp.com/open-days-2012/gunicorn-draft.html#%2820%29

This makes also the framework more attractive...

OpenERP core API library - great proposal !

Preparing the community days... I received a link to this presentation about API changes in the upcoming version 7.0. looks like ,excellent improvement with a lot of simplification, merging function, on_change and default mechanism is a great idea !

http://thu.openerp.com/open-days-2012/core-api-draft.html#%281%29

Meet you there !

Community days 2012 agenda

And now the agenda...

http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/openobject/openerp-opendays-2012/1

OpenERP - ProgrammingError: operator does not exist: integer = boolean

ProgrammingError: operator does not exist: integer = boolean
LINE 1: select name, model from ir_ui_view where (id=false or inheri...
                                                    ^
HINT:  No operator matches the given name and argument type(s). You might need to add explicit type casts.

Well all that crap comes from the fact that an OpenERP object does not have a name... Thus undefined field is false so the error about boolean and then a cast issue in query...

OpenERP - Python - AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'copy'

While OpenERP is a time saver for many aspects of writing a DB oriented app. Many aspects of the framework are left to the python and thus the framework.

I spent hours searching for this one...

AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'copy'

I am too much use to declarative language like Java... so I still miss some basic reflex... This error was in the definitions of my class object:

lass bemedicalworksheet (osv.osv):
    _name = 'nisf.bemedicalworksheet'
    _columns = {
                'vipowigw': fields.boolean("Wigw"),
                },


well this last coma makes python thinking it is a tuple instead of a dictionnary...

OpenERP POS Coming...

 Fabien posted a few documents concerning the touchscreen pos in OpenERP.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8I9h53mJ-C_MWYwN2QzNDgtMGYwNi00M2QxLTliZDEtMzE2ZDg1MDU5NjE2&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8I9h53mJ-C_MTFlY2M2OTEtY2RjMS00MTFjLTg4M2EtZjg1ZDc0OGFmYWE3&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

Obviously this may help introducing OpenERP into a lot of potential small companies...

OpenERP 6.0.2 is out - community days

So this is an important bug fix release which is out and I will start testing no later than tomorrow.

April 13 -, we will have the community days in Louvain La Neuve in Belgium. The url below point to the registration application:


http://openerpcommunitypartnersday.eventbrite.com/

Sorry, not publishing more about OpenERP right now. Too much projects and a lot really of work since the start of the week.