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Murray Saul
<span style="color:blue;">Hi Mark,<br /><br />I need your "point of view" or "optics"...<br /><br />After analysis, and students start to look to design and implementation, is it feasible for students to modify an existing open-source structure (i.e. not re-invent the wheel), or do they build own system from "ground up"? I don't want to "spin students off" when the implementation occurs. But then again, a tweak of an existing system may put less burden on students, and allow them to focus on what they have to do (i.e. scheduling system and other features like web-based editing already there). Therefore students just add an additional "module".<br /><br />The reason I'm asking this question, is that a few years ago, I was playing in Linux with an open-source app called egroupware. I used this as a demonstration for "booking rooms" using the calendar which was VERY effective over the Internet to book, and visualize on a given day in month all rooms booked. The church members where "very impressed" and some still talk about it today! I was thinking instead of "re-inventing the wheel", that the students could modify areas of this structure, to provide a more "realistic and effective" solution to the needs of this church.<br /><br />Danny Roy provided me a link to such open source framework for MS Windows:<br /><br />http://www.opengroupware.org/en/applications/index.html<br /><br /><br /><br />
This may be a good way to go. On the other hand, this link was just provided to me, so I would need to know if it is feasible in terms of: Is this framework "truly free"? Will this framework operate with current setup of MS server in church office? Does this framework work with MS Share-point framework to update web-page hosted on church's ISP? (ie. their side) Does Calendar work in the same way as with Linux egroupware demo? (conducted few years back) Does this allow easy method for students (using OO approach) to design and implement within this framework? I have no problem doing "background research" on my end to check this feasibility, but I would need to know, and I would tend to follow your suggestions... I guess my thinking is "do we do something that may be replaced in not too distant future, or could we "go for the prize", and tweak an existing framework that already has many features (that church can develop on its own time), and just allow students to "do their thing" without adding burden of having to create web-based scheduling system that is already out there...<br /><br />Thanks, Murray<br /><br />Murray, the answer is most certainly YES.<br /><br />This may enable them to add more function/content to the solution.<br /><br />The answers to the your 5 bullet questions should then be worked out during design. If we work backwards from the requirements and design the students may find that:<br /><br />1. Open source based scheduling system meets the requirements just fine, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The function they want has become "commoditized"<br /><br />2. There is a very valuable and specific booking business process which has not been adequately captured in Open Source. We should then create this function either as an extension to open source where we would then have to contribute it back through GNU or as a "proprietary" piece of software, presumably some MS code that ties to Outlook, Exchange, Sharepoint etc.<br /><br />Does that make sense to you Murray? In the end, the overarching goal is to design a system that meets the needs of the Church and can be implemented in 4 months. I was also thinking that SugarCRM would be a good solution and we could use the community edition.<br /><br />Cheers!<br /><br />Mark
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