See also the History of Petra!

Start of OpenPetra.org

In 2008, it became clear that the modernisation effort on Petra just within OM would not be enough. The requirements of the bigger offices are hard to satisfy while trying to rewrite the whole software at the same time.

The solution that OM came up with is this:

• For one year, one developer was exclusively assigned to work on a new version of Petra.
• This version will not have a dependency on the legacy 4GL solution anymore and will therefore be free from license payments and the restrictions that are currently imposed on Petra by the legacy 4GL solution.
• To achieve this, the project becomes an Open Source project, which brings the following benefits:
  • Petra will benefit not just OM, but other organisations as well. This justifies the effort even more, and is a good motivation for the developers
  • This allows other people to join in the effort. Because the project is Open Source anyone can evaluate it and see if he/she is interested to help
  • Other organisations can decide if they want to and are able to put in effort to make OpenPetra a solution that will work for them as well.
• The use of code generation, scaffolding and other modern software techniques like Test Driven Development (Unit tests), and the use of good open source software (e.g. PostgreSQL) should be the basis for a quick result.
• A parser+converter for 4GL User Interface code could help in getting the initial layout of a Petra screen and the data bindings of the fields of the screen over to OpenPetra.
• A community of users and developers should be established that provide support to each other.