The ASF Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee

I think this is very bad news for Java supporters and users. Making the JCP process open, and making possible for multiple open-source implementations of the JVM/ JDK was the best guarantee of future for Java users and developers. 

https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_asf_resigns_from_the

I regret this very much and hope that this will not impact hardly the future of excellent stuff provided by the Apache Software foundation - tomcat, Java DB, Velocity, Pivot, Log4J etc etc

For ope-source, community driven development, this type of news give them reason to stay away from the Java world...

Novell acquired by Attachmate

It sounds like the end of the dinosaurs. Novell pioneered a lot of stuff, LAN, network operating system, directory, xns, routing stuff... and much more. They built the first PC based enterprise products in my opinion.

They however always operated in an closed mode spirit. Getting spec from them was impossible for years. They were talented for secret and exasperating administrative process.And shame on them for what they did to Suse.

Why is attachmate buying them? Unclear to me. One thing is sure... I will not regret them.

OpenERP - various things

In average, the webinars organized so far were not an advertising for webex. Very poor sounds and high delays made these presentation real pains. It seems a part were from local settings... And unfortunately none of these sessions were recorder !

The last one, was probably the best (Oliver speak more slowly) and used slides instead of showing the real app. The result was much more acceptable.

http://www.slideshare.net/openobject/openerpv6technicalpresentation

I had a look at OERPScenario from camp2camp. This is a testing framework in "natural language". I agree on the target and the general concept. The implementation (in Ruby) annoys me more than anything else. 

Natural language is in this case more regexp than anything else and require ... Ruby coding. If we augment the capacity of the system, we will have hundreds of sentence to know ... is that natural?

So, it remains that currently the framework provides very few objects and  I have troubles to imagine a real test-driven project with this framework.


I will come back later on accounting stuff. V6 is for me the first release that can pretend deliver proper accounting functions (at least out of the box). I recommend following

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/583666

OpenERP has changed its bug fixing policy, basically they are focusing on the trunk and fixes in stable are done only when reported through a maintenance contract. This is in theory to avoid regression. I think they also push the selling of the maintenance contract (legitimate target). My fear is that getting the next stable will take much more time on the other sides it encourages people to test during the Beta tests. 

Bzr - TITLT

From time to time I hit the  "Could not acquire lock".

So if you believe there is no modification happening : bzr break-lock

bzrlib.errors.LockContention: Could not acquire lock "LockDir(file:///home/chanon/OPENERP/openerp-TRUNK/addons-extra/.bzr/branch/lock)":
chanon@bovvmubu:~/OPENERP/openerp-TRUNK$ bzr break-lock /home/chanon/OPENERP/openerp-TRUNK/addons-extra/.bzr/branch/lock
Break lock file:///home/chanon/OPENERP/openerp-TRUNK/addons-extra/.bzr/branch/lock
held by chanon@bob-ubu on host bob-ubu [process #19218]

At the root of the trouble, I am using a common partition between my real Ubuntu and another one on Vmare.

Btw good page on bzr : http://lucasmanual.com/mywiki/Bazaar

It is there - OpenERP V6 RC1 - first beta release is out

The future of open-source enterprise solution is in preview at :
http://www.openerp.com/downloads

Webkit reporting engine

Nice video about the webkit reporting engine (integrated in the soon coming V6:

http://files.me.com/nbessi/06n92k.mov

Joomla - sh404sef - Joomfish - images

########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section

#
RewriteRule ^(.*)/images/stories(.*)$ /images/stories/$2 [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.php|\.html|\.htm|\.feed|\.pdf|\.raw|/[^.]*)$  [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) index.php

Well may be the first RewriteRule in the .htaccess file will help somebody trying to get nice URL no ? or param=xx, Joomfish and images on all their articles. Provided you put all your images under /images/stories that should do the trick for today...

Joomla some problems with sh404sef and Joom!Fish

We are doing good progress with our new site. But I realized that the translation (I think language switching is more appropriate) does not work as expected. Typically the home page which is a category view does not translate...

I immediately suspected the combination of Joom!Fish and sh404sef as they both manipulate and interpret URL... Indeed to be compatible with another sef plugins you have to turn off the Joom!Fish plugins 'JFRouter'...

Everything is now back to normal.

Joomla - sh404sef - .htaccess - on Ubuntu 10

I am preparing our new web site for ADINS. We are migrating to a more recent Joomla version, plan to use Docman (document manager), Community builders (registration framework), FlexiContent (Content construction, tags etc) JoomFish (mult-language) and Kunena Forum.

Yesterday we started working with an external consultant for improving our Google rating.

Having nice url with the subject keyword is a first things to do. Joomla in standard helps a bit but the required component remains sh404sef (http://dev.anything-digital.com/sh404SEF/). With this component you can twist and maps url easily. sh404sef has also an inclusion of Google analytics (not tested yet).

On Apache (see for info http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/), proper URL relies on .htaccess. Joomla comes with a htaccess.txt file, renaming to .htacess should do the trick.
 

Publier le message

However I continued to get the 404 errors...

I checked, indeed sh404sef must be enabled with standard Joomla sef option.

I configured BaseRewrite to map my sub-directory with the being built web site.

I checked the presence of the mod_rewrite module (easy with webmin)...

Untill I found that the default site configured by the Ubuntu install does not let the distributed .htaccess file to be used.

The solution :


go to "/etc/apache2/sites-available".

- locate your site config file - in my case "default"
- change the AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.
- restart Apache and you are done...


 
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride All
       
       
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all

Accessing postgress Meta - info ANSI catalog

A short example : to get columns...

SELECT
  columns.table_catalog,
  columns.table_schema,
  columns.table_name,
  columns.column_name
FROM
  information_schema.columns;

OpenERP V6 - webminars - registration information

 FYI some early information about V6 – please note attendance is limited:

Dear Partner,

OpenERP will soon release the new version V6.0!

Therefore, our CEO Fabien Pinckaers will do a series of five Webinars, starting from October.
These Webinars will last about 2 hours and will be public.

The agenda is as follows:

    October the 6th, 10.00-12.00
    Part I/5 : New ergonomy, CRM , Marketing Campaign

    October the 12th, 10.00-12.00
    Part 2/5 : Manufacturing and Logistics

    October the 20th, 10.00-12.00
    Part 3/5 : Accounting and Finance

    October the 27th, 10.00-12.00
    Part 4/5 : HR and Project Management

    November the 3rd, 10.00-12.00
    Part 5/5 : Technical Presentation

You are warmly invited to take part to these Webinars, which will give you the unique opportunity to have a deep insight of the new version of the software.

You can register online to the public sessions through www.openerp.com/events or directly on Eventbrite:

    - Part I/5 (New ergonomy, CRM , Marketing Campaign): visit http://openerpwebinar15.eventbrite.com

    - Part 2/5 (Manufacturing and Logistics): visit http://openerpwebinar17.eventbrite.com

    - Part 3/5 (Accounting and Finance): visit http://openerpwebinar19.eventbrite.com

    - Part 4/5 (HR and Project Management): visit http://openerpwebinar21.eventbrite.com

    - Part 5/5 (Technical Presentation): visit http://openerpwebinar23.eventbrite.com

OpenERP V6 Call for contribution

If you can invest time and want to participate to the polishing of the new V6 read this:

http://bit.ly/9N1s2y

WebKit - new OpenERP report engine

The current standard report engine is been under for many mis-performance. In march campTocamp committed to provide a solution, simple, elegant, performant,python driven...

Well, I think they did :

http://www.camptocamp.com/fr/blog/2010/06/webkit-report-system-revolution-for-openerp/

Creating a Simple Database Client in JavaFX Composer

If you think that a database application is a 2 buttons 2 values 1 screen plate: this tutorial is for you...

http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/javafx/database-client.html

WE NEED A DECENT FRAMEWORK FOR BUSINESS APPLICATIONS !


- Text editor, spreadsheet - Even basic stuff
- Reports engine
- Client Server or Web with Plain Ajax
- Easy DB Access and GUI
- i18n really built-in not just a few labels translations...
- Application Framework - GUI / DB / Login / Permissions
- Application Module
- Integrated with IDE support
- Short and soft learning curve !

Great compilation of Java Swing stuff

If you are searching nice widgets, docking frameworks have a look at this page:

http://www.tutego.de/java/additional-java-swing-components.htm

OpenXava

OpenXava (www.openxava.org) is a model driven application framework.The idea is to build your application using JPA and enrich entities by extra-tags so openXava can generates screens.

The core idea is excellent because it throws away the MCV things and centers development around core business objects.

My first exposure is through their book on lulu - see http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=openxava.

This book is clearly worth the requested 9$. My only regret, internationalization is not covered - but OpenXava does support at least label translation.

OpenXava itself looks promising however it relies on Java portal (e.g: Liferay) to provide an interface shell and security. Obviously the portal aspect can be seen  as a benefit, but it means also that you need a strong hardware platform to go ahead.

Security management through the portal is may be also a bit short, just granting access to screens will probably not enough for serious enterprise application.

The look and feel is also very rough although they support Ajax making a really appealing product from it will be a challenge.

Summary compare to OpenObject:

+ JAVA
+ JPA / HIbernate
+ J2EE application without a hammer in your head
+ High potential in productivity
+ What you cannot do with it, you can do it using JSP...
= I18n features basic but present
= Portal (nice but imho heavy tech and a bit old-fashioned because portals were designed before Ajax)
- Rustic look & feel
- Elementary security through portal
- Internationalization does not take care of domain / fields translation (e.g: multiple names for a product)
- No reporting (need to use something else, no hint about integration put feasible)
- No deployment concepts as in OO

So if you forced to use Java, if you like using a strong ORM... it is worth looking at. But don't forget that the net result will be the deployment of the full Java stack which for small business remains a pain.

A small but nice article about some MDA Java Framework

 http://www.tikalk.com/java/domain-driven-java-frameworks-review

Well may be when I get tired of Open ERP...

How to reset a user's Joomla password

 Using the following sql script will reset the password of admin to '1234'

UPDATE `jos_users` SET `password` = MD5( '1234' ) WHERE `jos_users`.`username` = "admin"

Open ERP Training module - how to install

Thanks to Alain van de Werve to point me to the following stuff to install the Open ERP training module:

Client:
lp:~openobject-training/+junk/client-training

Server:
lp:~openobject-training/+junk/server-training

Addons Extra:
lp:~openobject-training/+junk/addons-training

Addons Standard:
==> stable from OpenERP.



Dependencies - addons

board_training
board_training_intra
portal_training
profile_training
training
training_degree
training_diagnostic
training_evaluation
training_exam
training_exam_processing
training_intra
training_process
training_report
training_room
warning_training

base_contact
base_contact_team
base_contact_crm

document_scan
smtpclient

account_analytic_plans
account_analytic_default
document

External
Zbar: http://zbar.sourceforge.net/
==> Il faut le compiler avec le module python normallement comme suis: (attention le 'make install' le fonctionne pas correctement pour python 2.6, il faut copier le .so manuellement) ==> ./configure --without-gtk --without-qt --without-imagemagick --with-python

Elaphe (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/elaphe/):
==> easy_install elaphe

XML & Swing... pita

http://java-source.net/open-source/xml-user-interface-toolkits

Well, going through this leads to a conlcusion : client / server with Swing & JEE is a bit like crossing the Death Vallyey wihout a bottle of water.