IntarS

Intars is a completely free ( under GNU GPL) enterprise software (ERP, PPS, ERP ) to Web browser interface for small to medium commercial, manufacturing and service companies.

Intars is a commercial open source ERP system. The driving force behind the development of the intars enterprise software GmbH and certified after training intars partner. They offer fee-based professional services and support the community at SourceForge. However, there is no distinction between community and professional version, the source is updated daily identical.

Intars aimed primarily at companies that have individual requirements and a somewhat dated self-made individual solution (usually on dBASE or Access) want to replace.

History

The beginnings of intars date back to 1996. For a database-oriented customer project in ObjectiveC on OPENSTEP with frequently changing requirements Pirmin Braun developed a modeling tool from which the intars Workbench was created. In several follow-up projects in the banking sector and for those BRAIN AG (later Agilisys now Infor ) matured the application framework approach (version 1).

In 1999, in collaboration with Ralf Engelhardt Industry Solution " Möbel2000 " (Version 2).

In 2000, Pirmin Braun and Ralf Engelhardt founded the seat- 1 Software GmbH and developed " Möbel2000 " further to the sector-neutral products "seat - one ERP" for production and "seat -1 WaWi " for trade (Version 3). As a technical innovation a web interface and the hybrid technique of compiled code and scripting were used.

Intars 4.0 came in early 2004 under GPL as a slimmer version of the seat- one ERP on the market. Functions, operating, work processes and division of labor were matched to the requirements of small and medium-sized enterprises.

2006 stopped with 5.0 intars a stronger focus on scripting and custom repositories feeder. In consequence arose industry solutions for electric, automotive, bicycle manufacturers and publishers. With version 5.1 of the IntarScript interpreter was improved over the previous version.

With intars 6.0 2010 included XHTML and interactive SVG graphics for dashboards and OLAP, a simplified programming model for application developers, as well as installation and operating tools were introduced.

Version 6.1 brought 2011 support for mobile devices, improved modularization, extensions of IntarScript language scope, new interfaces ( such as Microsoft Exchange and financial accounting software QuickBooks ), integration in RoundCube and refactoring of the framework in the year.

In 2012 the name was changed from "seat - 1 Software GmbH" in " intars enterprise software GmbH" was.

Functional areas

• Order Management
• Quotation
• Disposal
• Warehousing, inventory, warehouse More
• Accounting
• Project management
• Ordering
• Work Preparation
• Content Management
• Document management
• Groupware
• Production planning
• Production Control, Master Control
• Process control through barcode scanner
• CRM
• Statistical evaluations
• Datev and EuroFibu interface
• Fleet
• Variant system

System

Intars runs natively on 32- bit Linux (preferably Debian), as a virtual appliance on other platforms in the Intranet and Internet. As a MySQL database will be used. A standard PC as the server can handle 10 simultaneous users. With powerful hardware, there is no limit to the number of users. Clients access via web interface to it, eg with Firefox or Safari.

Technischnes

Architecture

In intars there is a separation between business logic and technical base system.

The basic system is written in Objective -C and compiled with gcc. It contains an interpreter for IntarScript and data model, as well as a general infrastructure for database, pressure, surface control and navigation, XML, communication and operating system accesses.

The business logic is written in IntarScript ( the dynamic part ) and defined in the data model ( the static part). The 1000 scripts and the data model are the repository together with module definitions, layout settings, style sheet, help files and other resources.

At runtime, the fundamental system loads the repository and thereby to the application itself. This is similar to the loading of a spreadsheet in a spreadsheet.

Each registered customer gets its own client number under which his individual (not public) repository is performed. Thus the compiled basic system remains updated and release-ready and can be released and developed source without violating business interests as open.

Programming

To build a new repository, the free default repository 000230 or an industry solution is duplicated. This already running system is available. This will be gradually adapted selectively and expanded.

Intars has a flat structure of approximately 100 modules and 1000 mainly independent scripts. This has several advantages:

• Has a script error, the impact on this a script limited ( defensive programming )
• There may be several programmers work independently in parallel because
• The programming effort can be well estimated, since it is proportional to the number of affected Scripts
• Versioning and the return to a known executable version can be done in small steps

All changes in the new repository will remain private. It can be losgelegt " on greenfield " without consideration for possible undesirable effects in other projects. Conversely, influenced no other customers project their own.

The scripts can be edited with any text editor. For Notepad and the integrated CodeMirror is a IntarScript language definition with syntax highlighting and keyword completion is available. It is developed on the running application by the modified scripts to be reloaded and the same tested after each editing operation. This will only take a few seconds and comes to meet the agile software development. Each module also has an interactive console, in the scripts in advance tried and can be improved by trial and error methods. The aim of this process model, as quickly as possible to create an exact match individual solution, which in addition will continue to operate during programming and can be further developed as flexible continuously during the real operation.

Support

A basic idea of open source is that you can customize the software. These offers intars following support:

• Workbench to manage the data model
• Script Manager
• Migration suites for dBASE and various CRM systems such as Cobra address manager or SugarCRM
• Module Management, Layout Designer, index maintenance
• The chapter "Extending and Customizing " in the help system
• Tutorial
• IntarScript reference
• A universal standard repository (No. 000230 ) as illustrative material for " Programming by Example"

Reuse

History shows that business logic is difficult to abstract and thus deprives the re-use aspect-oriented programming techniques or inheritance.

In order to still have to invent not always reinvent the wheel, IntarScript propagates the unplanned or blurred Reuse: If a new individual solution aged for some time in use, the functionality is taken informally in a knowledge management system. Now comes the time when you would need such a thing again, the functionality between repositories is merged. This is done textually with WinMerge and the Workbench.

If something is held to be generally interesting ( eg interfaces ), it is even merged into the default repository.

The repository structure up to IntarScript syntax is optimized for maximum efficiency of the merging (eg WinMerge ) for:

• Human-readable text files (UTF -8)
• Line-oriented
• Within the lines fixed fields
• Sorted by opportunity
• So much redundancy that a line considered by itself already states where it belongs

The development of versioning tools such as subversion or git in recent years with its branch, fork and merge techniques goes in the same direction.

It has been found in practice that merging improves quality. By continuously comparing files from different repositories errors are found incidentally, because they light up as a difference.

IntarScript

Originally created in 1997 as an interpreter IntarScript to create PDF. Over the years, the language scope constantly grew and became practically driven to a domain-specific language for the implementation of business logic. The design goals of the developers were:

• Efficiency, little paperwork
• DRY ( Do not repeat yourself ) principle
• Little overhead
• Easy to learn
• Uniformity
• Good versioning and merging
• Simple, performant, easy to widening interpreter

IntarScript borrows from C, Objective- C, bash, Ruby, Java, Perl, BASIC, and dBase.

IntarScript provides commands for:

• PDF generation
• Field and dialog control
• Database abstraction
• Input processing
• Evaluation, filtering, search, import / export interfaces
• Batch Processing
• Mail, fax, document management

Scripts in intars are relatively small. As a stand-alone scripts are generated, can be light-hearted program drauflos. Variables are by default in the sphere of influence of a script global, typeless, and have short names. Local variables and type tests must be explicitly declared against it.

IntarScript gives programmers no artistic freedom. There is exactly one statement per line and instructions and operands are invariably separated with commas. The nesting of expressions is limited. This restrictive syntax facilitates version control with subversion and WinMerge and makes it easier to find your way in foreign scripts. Naming conventions are enforced by favoring convention over configuration.

The combination of compiled framework and interpreter results in an overall performance that remains only slightly behind that of a fully compiled system. This is because, firstly, that are initially read in, parsed and converted into a kind of bytecode at system start all scripts. On the other run during the process of interpreting the vast majority of clock cycles again in compiled code, because it basically is a list of function calls. Had the Framework, however also in a scripting language such as PHP implements ( such ERP software systems are also available ), performance would be worse.

Nothing has to be compiled in application development. So according to the manufacturer everything complicated, technical of the compiled frameworks is separated from the technical, business management in the scripts. Enhancements and adjustments are made seamlessly using the same technique, with which also the standard was created.

Trivia

The name " intars " is an acronym for: International adaptive real-time software