ulrich.fuchs
1st December 2006, 18:35
I recently found a wishlist for Java on javalobby.org, so I thought it would be a nice idea to post one here concerning Infor/SSA/Baan software. Perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts about these points or add some new, these are mostely the annoyances of *my* last year with the software, but I think, you will have had similar ones.
Dear Santa,
I want for christmas
a graphical report editor in the software, so we can finally do Logo printing out of the box and use some other but fixed-width fonts for numbers which would still properly get right aligned. Just like the report editors of any little rat-shop's software do...
that the silly adress handling in ERP LN would be reworked, and that adresses get a primary key by business partner, order type, order number and (a long) sequence number, where business partner and order can be empty
that the even more silly "segmented domain" concept gets dumped and that project and item are two distinct fields again. Same goes for the cluster in the planning items.
that development license and sources are delivered free of charge as part of the standard installation
that the scripts get cleared of all hard-coded session names, so that it will be easy again to copy a session into a new code and just change the form, without the session changing it's behaviour like it's doing it now
that Infor software engineers would understand, that decoupling packages is nice, but that it's at best pointless to copy a two page sales order position text to a two page warehouse order position text to a two page invoice line text, and that they have been causing a nightmare for anyone trying to figure out where some functionality resides in the sources.
that they would realize, that sales price surcharges > 100% (negative discounts) are daily business in some operations, so there's no reason to give that domain a lower limit of -100
that Infor finds back to way of doing business in kind of a partnership way with their customers and professionals in the area, and that they will stop those distressing SSA business methods like forcing the customers to install spyware, trying to kick freelancers out of business and so on. ERP business is all about the customers trusting their vendor still being there in five years, so vendors should avoid any impression that they desperately needed any buck they can get by any means.
that the software becomes a GNU GPL licenened open source free software (ok, this one is hard, let's postpone it until next christmas)
that the software would offer more standard methods for hiding the ever increasing complexity of the product (like having eight item data session) from the customers (I'm looking forward to test the new multi-table-feature promised with porting set 8.3), so the end user experience gets better
That the software engineers can keep up the great work they have done so far with the multi-main-tables, DALs and dynamic form editor. Folks, that really helps us a lot on the customers site!
a graphical report editor within(!) ERP LN (just don't forget it)
That users can customize away the grey background of forms and that we have a way to programatically change the background color and font color of a field.
That two sum fields in a report could be used to do a percentage calculation, without needing to user their internal number (total..4)
a pricing module that is as flexible as the current one, but that users are able to understand.
that one also could do gross pricing, where the vat gets substracted to give the net value, instead of the other way round.
that even more parameters are overridable by master data entities (e.g having more of the warehousing parameters again as a property of the warehouse), so we get more flexibility
the porting set guys find a way that allows us to reconfigure tables safely on a production system without the users needing to log out and without our pulse always quickening to 220 because we fear that terrible error 512 to pop up afterwards for whatever reason...
an IDE that could do auto-completion (including some drop-down feature for table fields, of course) and parameter proposing for Baan-4GL-syntax
Ok, dear Santa, I better stop here now - I don't want to appear voracious. So, please send all the above nicely wrapped in in a new release january 2007...
many thanks in advance,
Little Ulrich
who still believes in you
Dear Santa,
I want for christmas
a graphical report editor in the software, so we can finally do Logo printing out of the box and use some other but fixed-width fonts for numbers which would still properly get right aligned. Just like the report editors of any little rat-shop's software do...
that the silly adress handling in ERP LN would be reworked, and that adresses get a primary key by business partner, order type, order number and (a long) sequence number, where business partner and order can be empty
that the even more silly "segmented domain" concept gets dumped and that project and item are two distinct fields again. Same goes for the cluster in the planning items.
that development license and sources are delivered free of charge as part of the standard installation
that the scripts get cleared of all hard-coded session names, so that it will be easy again to copy a session into a new code and just change the form, without the session changing it's behaviour like it's doing it now
that Infor software engineers would understand, that decoupling packages is nice, but that it's at best pointless to copy a two page sales order position text to a two page warehouse order position text to a two page invoice line text, and that they have been causing a nightmare for anyone trying to figure out where some functionality resides in the sources.
that they would realize, that sales price surcharges > 100% (negative discounts) are daily business in some operations, so there's no reason to give that domain a lower limit of -100
that Infor finds back to way of doing business in kind of a partnership way with their customers and professionals in the area, and that they will stop those distressing SSA business methods like forcing the customers to install spyware, trying to kick freelancers out of business and so on. ERP business is all about the customers trusting their vendor still being there in five years, so vendors should avoid any impression that they desperately needed any buck they can get by any means.
that the software becomes a GNU GPL licenened open source free software (ok, this one is hard, let's postpone it until next christmas)
that the software would offer more standard methods for hiding the ever increasing complexity of the product (like having eight item data session) from the customers (I'm looking forward to test the new multi-table-feature promised with porting set 8.3), so the end user experience gets better
That the software engineers can keep up the great work they have done so far with the multi-main-tables, DALs and dynamic form editor. Folks, that really helps us a lot on the customers site!
a graphical report editor within(!) ERP LN (just don't forget it)
That users can customize away the grey background of forms and that we have a way to programatically change the background color and font color of a field.
That two sum fields in a report could be used to do a percentage calculation, without needing to user their internal number (total..4)
a pricing module that is as flexible as the current one, but that users are able to understand.
that one also could do gross pricing, where the vat gets substracted to give the net value, instead of the other way round.
that even more parameters are overridable by master data entities (e.g having more of the warehousing parameters again as a property of the warehouse), so we get more flexibility
the porting set guys find a way that allows us to reconfigure tables safely on a production system without the users needing to log out and without our pulse always quickening to 220 because we fear that terrible error 512 to pop up afterwards for whatever reason...
an IDE that could do auto-completion (including some drop-down feature for table fields, of course) and parameter proposing for Baan-4GL-syntax
Ok, dear Santa, I better stop here now - I don't want to appear voracious. So, please send all the above nicely wrapped in in a new release january 2007...
many thanks in advance,
Little Ulrich
who still believes in you