We are currently going through an investigation into the issues involved in migrating to Baan from an AS400 based ERP system.
We have on our current system numerous customisations built around the BOM ie specialised costing reports, materials analysis, inquiries etc. As at this stage I know very little about either the Baan database structure or tools I wondered whether someone could explain very simply how easy it is to work with the BOM on Baan. For example is the data held in a typical 'parent / child' tree format and what programming technique is typically used to manipulate this structure (recursive SQL, Baan 4GL scripts etc). Any simple code example(s) would be most appreciated.

Many thanks

Andy

What version of Baan are you all looking at? I am only familiar with 4c3 with the A&D extension.

I think it depends on how complicated you make bill structures, but the data is basically kept in one table. Will you use effectivity? If so how. Do you use phantoms? Will you have purchase parts that you will make sometimes? If we did not use all of the above I probably could strip a lot of code out of some of my programs. It is not simple, but it is not that hard either. Our typical BOM program tracks the levels using arrays. So it really is not recursive routines.

The A&D extension does cause some problems since the standard Baan programs do not read the group item table. So we developed most of what we use. I do not have anything real simple to post and if you buy source then you can easily use Baan standard code to develop your own stuff. And the baan code is easier to follow and read than some of our stuff.

Once you have Baan come visit this forum and I am sure we can help you with any problems you might have.

Good Luck!

Mark