Book Image

ADempiere 3.4 ERP Solutions

Book Image

ADempiere 3.4 ERP Solutions

Overview of this book

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are essential in today's business market. There are many options for ERP systems; however, ADempiere offers a solid foundation for developing a powerful ERP system that helps your business to manage data efficiently, streamline different processes, lower costs, and improve the efficiency levels without too much complexity. This practical book offers a comprehensive understanding of ADempiere and a look at its main features by way of developing and enhancing a sample case study from concept to deployment. This book will help you model complex business processes with ease. You will learn to install ADempiere followed by configuring the company structure and the initial client set up. You can start working with ADempiere immediately because this book will get you up and running quickly and assumes no knowledge or experience of working with ADempiere. ADempiere3.4 ERP Solutions enables you to set up the accounting parts, define the prerequisite data, learn about product and price management, and perform procurement and sales activities. When you read the book, you'll understand the concept behind the ADempiere workflow and the important function of managing the inventory. Activities such as making user-defined financial reports, procedures on importing data, and security will be covered in detail, and you will also learn about the application dictionary. ADempiere generates accounting facts/journals automatically. In this book, you will understand the impact of these accounting facts in detail. This book will give you a comprehensive study on how to easily implement ADempiere and make the best use of this open source ERP system.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
ADempiere 3.4 ERP Solutions
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Installing the Sun Java Development Kit (JDK)


All applications, that are written in Java programming language including ADempiere, require a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for execution. The JVM is distributed along with a standard Java class library that implements the Java Application Programming Interface (API). A complete implementation of JVM is included in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), which can be obtained during the installation of the Java Development Kit (JDK) or by installing Java Runtime Environment.

Obtaining JDK/JRE

ADempiere can be installed on any operating system—Mac OS, Linux, BSD families, and so on, but in this book we will use Microsoft Windows as the operating system.

You can download the latest JDK/JRE available from the Sun Microsystems website at http://java.sun.com/. Throughout this book, JDK 5.0 will be used as a prerequisite for installing ADempiere. We can download JDK 5.0 from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp. At the time of writing this book, the latest version or release for JDK 5.0 is JDK 5.0 Update 17. Future versions or releases of JDK can also be used without any problems.

Click on the JDK 5.0 Update 17 Download button, and you will be directed to the download page. Set the platform as Windows and the language as Multi-Language. On the next page, choose Windows Offline Installation. The filename for this JDK is jdk-1_5_0_17-windows-i586-p.exe. It is about 52.15 MB in size. In order to manage the downloaded files, first create a C:\download\jdk folder, and then save the files to this folder.

JDK installation files are required for the ADempiere server installation, but they are not necessary for the ADempiere client installation. On the client side, only the JRE installation files are needed. To download these files, click on the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 Update 17 Download button. Select the platform and language as mentioned previously, (including the Windows Offline Installation mode). Save the jre-1_5_0_17-windows-i586-p.exe file to the C:\download\jdk folder.

Installing JDK/JRE

Due to the default installation behavior of Microsoft Windows, a new application installation will commonly be directed to the C:\Program Files folder. An important thing when installing JDK and/or JRE on Microsoft Windows is that we should avoid installing it to C:\Program Files directly. To avoid any problems during the ADempiere implementation, it is recommended that you install it to a folder that does not contain spaces in the directory or folder name, such as C:\Java.

JDK installation on the ADempiere server computer

Double-click on jdk-1_5_0_17-windows-i586-p.exe to start the Windows installer.

By default, the installer will install development tools, demo files, source code, and public JRE. For our reference, leave the Development Tools feature selected and deselect the other features by clicking on the buttons on the left-hand side of Demos, Source Code, and Public JRE, and then choosing Don't install this feature now. This is shown in the following screenshot:

Select Development Tools, click on the Change button to alter the default or target directory to C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_17, and proceed to complete the JDK installation.

Note

During the Development Tools installation, a private JRE will automatically be installed. In our case, it will be installed at C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_17\jre.

JRE installation on the ADempiere client computer

The ADempiere client installation requires installation of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) only. Open the link http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se/5.0_17/ and double-click on jre-1_5_0_17-windows-i586-p.exe. At the license agreement, ensure that you choose the Custom setup, and click on the Accept button. Leave the J2SE Runtime Environment selected, and deselect the other features by clicking on the buttons to the left-hand side of Support for Additional Languages and Additional Font and Media Support. Choose Don't install this feature now. Select J2SE Runtime Environment, click on the Change button to alter the default or target directory to C:\Java\jre1.5.0_17, click on the Next button, and proceed to complete the JRE installation.

Tip

There is no need to install JRE if you are using the same computer for both the ADempiere Server and the Client.

Configuring Java system variables and the Windows path

Now that we have installed JDK/JRE, we have to set up JAVA system variables and set Windows paths both for the ADempiere server and the client computer, as ADempiere runs on a Java platform.

We need to set these variables in the System Properties window. You can access this window through Start | Control Panel | System (or Start | Settings | Control Panel | System in the case of the Windows classic menu). Select the Advanced system settings tab, and click on the Environment Variables button.

The following table shows the value of a Java system variable and a Windows path for the ADempiere server installation to be set up in the Environment Variables window:

No

Variable

Value

1

JAVA_HOME

C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_17

2

Path

%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%JAVA_HOME%\jre\bin\client

For the ADempiere client installation, you may set the following Java system variable and Windows path in the Environment Variables window:

No

Variable

Value

1

JAVA_HOME

C:\Java\jre1.5.0_17

2

Path

%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%JAVA_HOME%\bin\client

The Environment Variables window is shown as follows:

This is an example of System variables in the Environment Variable window from the author's computer. It might vary for your own computer's configuration.

You can set additional JAVA_HOME variables by clicking on the New button in System variables. To set your own JAVA_HOME variables, click on the Edit button by selecting an existing path variable entry and enter your additional path entries. In order to confirm the addition of system variables, click on OK in both the Environment Variable window and the System Properties window.

Tip

While setting up the Path variable, any additional variable inclusion in these entries must be prefixed with a semicolon (;) character.

Verifying system variables and the Windows path

Once we have finished adding the additional variables, we have to check whether the setup of the variables was configured properly. We shall check our variables' entries from the DOS prompt command line. We can access DOS prompt from Start | Run. Type cmd in the Run window, and click on the OK button. We will get the following command prompt:

We can type the following in this command line, and Enter:

C:\>SET

Pay attention to the resulting information. On the author's ADempiere server computer, it displays the following statements:

JAVA_HOME=C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_17

and

Path=C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_17\bin;C:\Java\jdk1.5.0_17\jre\bin\client

Whereas the ADempiere client computer will contain the following statements:

JAVA_HOME=C:\Java\jre1.5.0_17

and

Path=C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Java\jre1.5.0_17\bin;C:\Java\jre1.5.0_17\bin\client

The second procedure for checking the setup configuration is to use Java commands. For example, in order to find a command to know what the currently-installed Java version is, we can use the following command:

C:\>java -version

and press Enter. This showed the following statements on the author's computer:

java version "1.5.0_17"Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_17-b04)Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_17-b04, mixed mode, sharing)