By Hwangar on

This speech is only just talking at the moment,

I'll tell you the entire story: currently I'm studying because of my work the state of the art of the ERP's existing in the market (for those that dont know what an ERP is, to summarize is the software that rules a company, usually the processes of customers, invoices, products, stores, etc) and got impressed:

meanwhile the world of internet has moved fast growing projects like Drupal everywhere, borning and dieing, the world of ERP is the same as a couple of years ago:

  • Closed system: the omnipotent SAP, that have enough money to be even in McLaren and more..., one of Oracle and other of Microsoft that share the 90% of the market, and a lot of other ones, usually local, with the 10%
  • Open systems:Apache Foundation is raising Ofbiz, maybe promising, but I dont like at all, a very good one made in Python: OpenERP, a couple in Java quite monolythic like OpenBravo (webbased) or Compiere, but there is no much more trustable technological alternatives totally OPEN

the thing is I thought about the work that one should make to transform some parts of the Drupal architecture to an ERP (of course with my likes), so there it goes my thoughts and ideas:

  • Of course it should be a SERVER (a small miniDrupal core) that should receive and publish an ERP-agnostic protocol (maybe JSON, XML-RPC, etc)
  • Multiple clients in any technology that "understand" the ERP-protocol
  • The ERP-protocol itself

Lets discuss... the protocol: I imagine it as something, speaking in "drupal" like a form definition with its links as actions that can be operated on the form and with a certain metadata just as hints to render (YES, its vague.... :P)

the server or the "miniDrupalERP", we could include the role/permision system, of course the HOOKING SYSTEM, as the key point (for me the reason of the drupal success) maintaining much of the current hooks in order contributors could be making new modules for the ERP, maybe the node concept, blocks are not necessary I think, menu system yesss, as a routing system for client requests (MVC... actions,etc), localization... why not, and the form API (adapted) of course yesss

the client/s as easy (or hard) as build something that understand the well-defined protocol of the ERP with orders like "get me the order #545 (action EDIT)" answering with the metadata of the form with the lines and all the "links/actions" that the user is allowed to launch. I'd like a web based one (maybe in GWT???) and a heavy client one (better response, maybe Swing, GTK, etc) but the protocol concepts should be agnostic so I imagine that as a ERP virtual machine understanding concepts like a wizard, render a form, mounting a menu, etc but the thing it'd be in the server

I dont want to go further... if you have read til here, congratulations!!! you'll think I went nuts or something like that, but the thing is Im not in the mood to work so I wrote all this... the question for the Drupal genies is ... how do you see this insane thing????

Greetings to everyone,
Juan Arias
Spain

Comments

walterbyrd’s picture

walterbyrd commented

I don't know if OpenERP has a SOAP interface, that might be a real problem. I know that OpenERP can connect to it's eTiny interface over a internet connection, so there may be some SOAP. I know that OpenERP has an XML-RPC interface, but I not sure if that would be good enough. As far as I know, nobody in the USA uses OpenERP, it is too obscure, too unsupported, and there are too many missing features such as OFX for online banking, or the ability to print checks.

QuickBooks, although not quite an ERP, is extremely popular for SMBs in the USA. I believe that something like 80% of US SMBs use QuickBooks. QuickBooks does have a SOAP interface, but QuickBook's database is completely closed, and proprietary. There is a project underway to connect Drupal with QuickBooks, at least for Drupal ecommerce. There is a free PHP toolkit to connect websites with QuickBooks.

MS-Office-Accounting, and MS-Dynamics-ERP, use real databases - either MS-SQL server, or MS-SQL-Server express. In the US SMB market, I think (sadly) that microsoft is the only viable competitor to Intuit (quickbooks). I am not sure if the microsoft products have a soap interface.

parthiv_sk’s picture

parthiv_sk commented

Open erp has NET RPC and XML RPC based interfaces, and vast range of modules, even if you don't find the modules of your requirement, the larger partner network of open erp provides you with customization and integration services.

GreyHawk’s picture

GreyHawk commented

...but no Drupal/Ubercart.

:/

bg1’s picture

bg1 commented

I am confused. I get the impression you are trying to integrate Drupal with a remote ERP system; possibly with web services.

At the same time you indicate you want Drupal to be a server.

I would have thought you would want Drupal to be the client to remote web services offered by the ERP application.

If you are still following this thread, please clarify.

samudranb’s picture

samudranb commented

Hi

We are looking at implementing a ERP+E-commerce solution at my company.
We have narrowed down the ERPs to Ofbiz and OpenERP, and would like to use Drupal/ubercart with that. Has anyone done anything similar?
Could someone guide us to the resources like that? Or do people usually just use the inbuilt Ecommerce packages of the ERPs? (I really dont like the look and feel of it. drupal / ubercart is so much better - both looks and maintainability!!)

chiefpenguin’s picture

chiefpenguin commented

One method of integrating OpenERP with a variety of e-commerce solutions is to leverage the TerminatOOOR connector. OOOR stands for Open Object On Rails (open object is the underlying RAD framework underneath OpenERP). It's been used to connect OSCommerce w/OpenERP and is probably the best way to go at this point.

Magento has a native connector developed to OpenERP.

A couple of factors must be considered when integrating to OpenERP.

1) the webservice or file API (XML/RPC on OpenERP)
2) the schema mapping (stupid work essentially but requires a lot of work)
3) maintaining a double referential (unless you can work only with absolute ID's which is often not the case).
4) UI interface

Here are a couple of links of interest.
http://www.openerp.com/forum/post50129.html?highlight=&sid=30b6cd1d443a1...
http://www.akretion.com/en/blog/2010/01/18/introducing-ooor---openobject...

Contact me directly if we can be of help. We are an OpenERP partner in the US.

Personally, we spent about 6 months evaluating the architectures of the various open source ERP's in the market and for us the clear winner was OpenERP - which is why we became a US partner. OpenERP is opening their US offices in California this summer as well - which should boost your confidence in the US.

There are active US implementations in the US.

rabkhan’s picture

rabkhan commented

An ERP is like a software system that integrates all facets of the business, including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. I think u have to create a few modules and make sure these modules are AJAXified.

boran’s picture

boran commented

subscribe

oldmoonlake’s picture

oldmoonlake commented

we are actually using openerp and ubercart in a productive environment. Both of them are great projects. Would love to see them integrated. subscribed.

stoltoguzzi’s picture

stoltoguzzi commented

How you are working using this two product without a connection?

Viranil’s picture

Viranil commented

My company has a Drupal (Ubercart) website, but now wants to use OpenERP as well. How do you use OpenERP and Ubercart together?

oldmoonlake’s picture

oldmoonlake commented

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Currently we use them separately and it is beyond our capability to do the integrate since we are a small company in biotechnology.

Arabella’s picture

Arabella commented

I want to know how to integrate a drupal website's contact form with the OpenERP Leads so that contact form will load into OpenERP leads.
Any help will be much appreciated. thanks