Reviewing Vienna ERP, ERP5 and DBA Manufacturing

I recently Investigated Vienna Advantage ERP, ERP5 and DBA Manufacturing to evaluate their suitability in place of Maestro. Vienna Advantage and DBA Manufacturing were installed from distribution on a Windows 7 VM, and ERP5 was evaluated using a provided Suse Linux VM. Unfortunately, all three were found unsuitable for one reason or another.

Vienna Advantage ERP

Vienna Advantage ERP was started in Germany and is a relative new-comer to the field. It is developed using Microsoft’s .NET platform, and uses an open-source open-core (or freemium) business model.

  • The Vienna Advantage ERP core is provided under the Eclipse Public License (EPL).
  • Bill-of-Materials for manufacturing is not included in the core.
  • Document control is not included in the core (available as a related but separate non-open-source application).

ERP5

ERP5 has a unique architecture, using a unified business model with a core set of primitives (objects and methods), from which all other data and flows of information are derived.

  • Significant learning curve due to generality of platform.
  • Documentation does not include manufacturing processes.

DBA Manufacturing

DBA Manuacturing is a fully-featured proprietary Windows application, targeted at manufacturers and suitable for 5 to 50-person workgroups. Integrated financials are included but not enabled by default, it is expected the typical user will already have a financial system such as QuickBooks, and aggregated transactions will be periodically transferred to it from DBA.

  • A free single-user trial version is available, although bulk data import is disabled and the company name (“DBA Sample Company”) cannot be changed.
  • DBA does not include a configurator, although it does have nice support for one-off manufacturing.
  • A manufacturing process can produce multiple outputs, supporting disassembly and re-manufacturing.
  • DBA uses Windows peer-to-peer networking on a LAN (I.e. not over the Internet).

 

 

Install mdbtools on Centos 7

Maestro depends on mdbtools for extracting part data from a Parts&Vendors database. I have always used mdbtools on FreeBSD (installing the binary package), but recently have needed mdbtools on Centos 7 for use with ERPNext. I read a number of internet posts recommending installing mdbtools from the Fedora EPEL repository but, if mdbtools is still in EPEL, I need to learn more about installing software on Centos/RHEL.

Except for installing a few pre-requisites, install generally followed the mdbtools github README.mdb.

Install pre-requisites

# yum install glib2-devel
# yum install txt2man
# yum install gnome-doc-utils

Install mdbtools

# cd /root/work
# git clone https://github.com/brianb/mdbtools.git mdbtools
# cd mdbtools
# autoreconf -i -f
# ./configure
# make
# make install

Use mdbtools

The mdbtools utilities are installed to /usr/local/bin/

mdb-array
mdb-export
mdb-header
mdb-hexdump
mdb-parsecsv
mdb-prop
mdb-schema
mdb-sql
mdb-tables
mdb-ver

Each utility has its own man page

# man mdb-export

and includes built-in short help

mdb-export --help

Install ERPNext on bare metal Ubuntu

This post is essentially the same as my Install ERPNext on bare metal Centos 7, but using Ubuntu 64b 14.04.1-server. I ran into difficulty installing ERPNext on Centos, and now understand some subtle but critical differences between a DigitalOcean Centos 7 droplet, and a Centos 7 install on bare metal using the Centos Everything-DVD ISO. As a result I’m switching to Ubuntu, which is also supported by setup_frappe.sh.

I’m starting with a Dell Optiplex 755 and the DVD iso file for 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS .

  • Boot into the MEBx BIOS (Ctrl-P instead of F2) and disable Intel ANT ME BIOS Extension (that doesn’t play nice). ThinkWiki has a good article, and besides knowing the default password to get in (admin), you MUST change the password – and it MUST be a strong password
  • install Ubuntu from ubuntu-14.04.1-server-amd64.iso
    • server name (whizzer.local), timezone, and first user
    • disk partitioning – select Guided – use entire disk and set up LVM
    • no automatic updates – automatic updates could be distracting, and it can probably be figured out later
    • collections: OpenSSH server, Mail server, Samba file server
      • mail server configuration type: Local only (The only delivered mail is the mail for local users. There is no network.).
        • Other options: 1) Internet site (mail is sent and received directly using SMTP), 2) Internet with smarthost (mail is received directly using SMTP or by running a utility such as fetchmail. Outgoing mail is sent using a smarthost.), and 3) Satellite system (All mail is sent to another machine, called a ‘smarthost’ for delivery.). I don’t think this will handle having virtual users (instead of system users with system accounts).
      • Postfix Configuration: System mail name: whizzer.local All mail addresses default to here if a host isn’t specified.
      • Create SSL certificate (name: localhost)
  • Reboot!
  • Fix “no talloc stackframe at ../source3/param/loadparm.c:4864, leaking memory”
    • http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2214042
  • connect using WinSCP and copy public ssh key to /root/.ssh/, also copy authorized_hosts and id_rsa (openssh), and reboot (don’t know how to stop/start ssh on Ubuntu either).
  • follow Easy Way in ERPNExt frappe bench README.md
  • point browser at the server ip address
    • server produced ERPNext login screen, so it seems the basics are working.
  • Access the server from a browser (port 80), and sign into ERPNext as “Adminstrator” using the password output at the end of the setup_frappe.sh execution.
  • Backup the database after completing the setup wizard.

Compared to Centos, wkhtmltopdf installed correctly, and did not have to be manually installed afterwards.

setup_frappe.sh log

dale@hotstuff:~$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/frappe/bench/master/install_scripts/setup_frappe.sh
--2014-11-20 03:49:46--  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/frappe/bench/master/install_scripts/setup_frappe.sh
Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)... 23.235.47.133
Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com (raw.githubusercontent.com)|23.235.47.133|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 11561 (11K) [text/plain]
Saving to: ‘setup_frappe.sh’

100%[===============================================================================================>] 11,561      --.-K/s   in 0s

2014-11-20 03:49:47 (61.5 MB/s) - ‘setup_frappe.sh’ saved [11561/11561]

dale@hotstuff:~$ sudo bash setup_frappe.sh --setup-production
[sudo] password for dale:
Installing for Ubuntu trusty amd64
In case you encounter an error, you can post on https://discuss.frappe.io

Adding debian mariadb repo
Installing packages for Ubuntu. This might take time...
Installing wkhtmltopdf
Adding frappe user
setup_frappe.sh: line 300: hash: pip-2.7: not found
setup_frappe.sh: line 302: hash: pip2.7: not found
Installing frappe-bench
Setting up first site

Frappe/ERPNext is installed successfully and is running on port 80.
Frappe password: xxxxx
MariaDB root password: xxxxx
Administrator password: xxxxx

The passwords are also stored at ~/frappe_passwords.txt
You can remove this file after making a note of the passwords.
dale@hotstuff:~$ 

Backup database

Maybe…

systemctl status mariadb.service
mysqldump -u root -p --databases site1.local > ~/erpnextbkup/erpnext-1.sql

Restore database

Maybe…

mysql -u root -p site1.local < ~/erpnextbkup/erpnext-1.sql

Communicating with an Open Source Project Community

When the ERPNext project was starting up, I recommended being explicit regarding controlling various rights for the good of the project:

  • source code license
  • source code copyright ownership
  • name and logo trademark control

Seeing the project today, I commend the ERPNext team for their professionalism and being up front and clear about the rights, and will use this post as an excuse to experiment with the ERPNext project’s stated preferences for sharing code snippets and screen shots when posting to the project’s message board.

All very cool, and I really like the message board.

Also, I found out Greenshot, an open-source screenshot application for Windows, will send directly to imgr. Very cool, but I don’t understand how providing this anonymous service benefits imgur, maybe the images will be gone in 24 hours. I’ll check back tomorrow.

ERPNExt README.md file from Github