myco


README

$Id: README,v 1.3 2003/12/19 21:36:45 sommerb Exp $


* Welcome to myco and The myco Project!

The purpose of The myco Project is to create and sustain a full-fledged,
open-source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.  The initial target
"customer" is colleges and universities, though every attempt is to be
made to construct system features in a more generally applicable fashion.

Building an ERP system is a tall order, to put it mildly.  As soon
as we have established a stable framework with some usable functionality
we will create an open-source distribution and announce our existence as
an open project.  It is our belief that many institutions could benefit
from an open-source ERP;  if our initial offering is technically
sound and actually useful then it seems reasonable to expect that a
community of contributors will form with the intent to move the product
more fully toward being a complete ERP.

The initial phase of development is focused on producing a deployable
system capable of automating college marketing and admissions functions.
This work is being sponsored by Eastern Nazarene College (http://www.enc.edu).
In support of these functions is emerging an application framework and a core
object model that are being constructed with objectives of coherency and
extensibility firmly in mind. 

The name 'myco', by the way, loosely stands for "my company", and as such
points to our full-scale ERP aspirations.  The name was arrived at with
a minute or so of consideration.  Not terribly inspired, perhaps, but we've
found it to be catchy.  :-)


* Getting Started

We're more than a bit lean on documentation at present.  Bits are beginning
to appear under 'docs'.  'docs/INSTALL' is an obvious starting point.
Newer classes now have POD documentation firmly embedded.  To access:

	cd $MYCO_BASE/classes
	perldoc CLASS

Recommended initial reading:

  Key framework base classes
   * Myco::Base::Entity
   * Myco::Test::EntityTest

  Clean example of Entity class: (though not with much in the way of
      interesting methods.  Older entity classes, which at the moment
      means everything except Marketing::*, presently have no POD and
      use older version of base classes that are due for retirement)
   * Myco::Marketing::Tool
   * Myco::Marketing::Tool::Test

  Key 3rd-party components
   * Perl - http://www.perl.com
   * Tangram - http://soundobjectlogic.com
   * Class::Tangram
   * HTML::Mason - http://www.masonhq.com
   * mod_perl - http://perl.apache.org
   * PostgreSQL - http://www.postgresql.org


* CVS access

All access is via ssh.  You'll need a valid account, of course.  Usual
setup details apply (eg. set environment variable CVS_ROOT to 'ssh').

   Checkout:

        cvs -d dev.its.enc.edu:/var/netg/cvsrep co myco


* Thanks for your participation!


Charles N. Owens,
Senior Technology Officer
Eastern Nazarene College