computing (104)

This little module produces graph diagrams out of workflows, useful for documentation purposes. It uses Graphviz for the actual graph generation.

It currently generates two distinct kinds of graphs:

• One for the workflow definition, showing all workflow states, the transitions linking them, and the roles allowed to perform those transitions.
• One for a workflow instance history, i.e. the path that a workflow took for a specific node.

Consider the HR department of a small organization. At some point they will need to organize their employees' records, and at that point they will face the traditional dilemma of purchasing an existing HR application or commissioning the creation of a custom-made one. If they choose the first approach, they will have to do extensive product comparison before settling on a system. If they choose the second one, they will have to go through a lengthy cycle of requirements gathering before the system can be built.

Thinking about it, the HR data model and processes don't really change from one company to the other. But somehow, each HR system has its own way of representing the same functionality. And no product implements every piece of functionality. So choosing an existing HR system or specifying requirements for a new one is more a complex activity today than the problem it is addressing.

Take a Linux PC, put it in an arcade cabinet (you can find them second-hand around Cairo), get a huge monitor, hook them to a 2-player joystick pad (X-Arcade), and host the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) software. You can play all those old arcade games forever and for free! This is not a new idea, many people are already doing it, but it can be an amazing party gadget.

Actually this should be called DEEP 1-2-3, or perhaps DEEP SHEEEET.

Introduction

One interesting observation about the business world is that managers love Excel. They want to use it to do everything. Except that Excel is not ready to do everything, however Microsoft is trying to beef it up.

Specifically, what is Excel used for?

• Tallying numbers
• Creating forms
• Simulating models
• Analyzing data
• Creating reports

Pretty impressive.

Small business software systems typically exhibit low domain complexity. Business problems are recurrent across industries and geographic boundaries, there are little or no algorithmic challenges, analysis models are converging towards standardization, and the required functionality is well-documented and often-implemented. In spite of this, we find that business systems are still expensive, monolithic, user-unfriendly, hardly extensible or integratable. Even the current generation of open source business software exhibits these properties.