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Re: Thoughts on Voiding Invoices

Hi Jason;

On 9/24/06, Jason Rodrigues <..hidden..> wrote:


My $.02 --

I'm being paid to support this app in a manufacturing context.


Great.  Would be interested in any contributions you make in this context.


 But first, and
foremost, I'm interested in a Clean, Modular, Well thought out, and
Pluggable API and codebase so that LedgerSMB can be  trivially extended in
just about any direction.  I want to get the code base in such a shape that
it can work on mod_perl, and scale up to handle many simultaneously
transactions per second.


A lot of work is going into this area.  I think that eventually (once
we get the db schema stabilized) we can freeze the core API and make
the rest far more portable.  This would allow us to put in hooks for
overriding default behavior for things like inventory calculations.

If you are interested in this area, you might want to check out the
now abandoned OpenLedger for their implementation,  It might be
portable to LedgerSMB.  They wrote an OO Perl API and a SOAP interface
to SQL-Ledger 2,4.x.



There's tremendous value in a package that's a solid accounting core, and
easily extendable to move into other industries.  I've seen at one of my
other clients, a CNC Machining shop, another accounting app, but all focused
on job and work flow in a CNC Shop.


Agreed.  I think that one of the keys here is to help work with people
who are adapting the software to the industries so that we can help
these changes be made in a maintainable way.


I emphasize the clean plugable API, because this permits users supporting the
app to add in features on a whim (LIFO inventory, okay in by default.  FIFO
inventory, Random inventory, whatever, install the right module, and it's
there. )  Look at some other successful applications with Plugable APIs:
WinAMP, Dashboard, Konfabulator, etc.  A rich community quickly popped up and
made many little widgets and plugins for each application.  The more folks
interested in the app, developing for it, the stronger the userbase will be.


You dont have to make the case to me-- I am in favor of making the
application as extensible as possible.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers