Update for the last 4 weeks until February 8th, 2011

• The visit of the six students and the two members of staff from the Computer Science and Engineering department of Taylor University (Indiana/US) (http://cse.taylor.edu/) to the OM offices in Carlisle was very successful! They got to know quite a few aspects of the openPETRA development and created useful functionality, using our WinForms Generator to generate twelve ‘Maintain Table’ screens for a start. They then went on to begin development on two ‘UserControls’, which will improve the navigation and look-and-feel of the openPETRA main menu screen once they are finished. Two of the students embarked on a longer-running software engineering project. They will continue to work on it in university during the spring semester, under the tutelage of their professor. The two students are creating a framework for data entry assistants (aka ‘Shepherds’). ChristianK and WolfgangB were teaching and coaching this fantastic and highly motivated group and found it to be an enjoyable and rewarding experience!
• ChristianK’s work on the Partner Find screen is progressing: the menus now have all possible menu items and they are enabled/disabled according to the situation (although many menu items aren’t functional yet) and a ToolBar has been added to the screen, the collapsible Partner Info panel on that screen got completed.
  ChristianK also closed a few annoying Bugs in our Grid/List View, which affected a lot of screens. One of the bugs could only be fixed because the underlying Grid Control (SourceGrid, http://sourcegrid.codeplex.com/) is open source and ChristianK could understand from the Grid’s source code how our wrapper Grid/List View Control could be fixed. That’s one of the open source advantages!
  
• TimotheusP’s work on the online registration for a conference that OM Germany is hosting in the end of July is progressing well. Adjustments to support various languages and home office situations are done currently.
  This is a first application which demonstrates the ability to create good-looking web frontends for – and with – openPETRA, although openPETRA is mainly a desktop application which runs outside of a web browser. Demo: http://demo.openpetra.org:8009/ (esp. the last two links on that web page).
• WolfgangU is still working on the foreign currency handling and the revaluation process – the basics are working now. While creating Unit Tests he encountered some problems with our Unit Test software, which is slowing down the speed of development. However, time spent on creating a better Unit Test infrastructure is time spent well…
• MatthiasH has finished work on General Ledger and Gift import. This should soon get integrated into the main development line of openPETRA (from a development branch). He is now working on the Gift Edit screen, adding Controls that have been there in Petra 2.x, eg. confidential flag, mailing code etc.
• ChristianK and MatthiasG (who are our Architecture Team) are continuing to lead investigations on various architectural issues and are currently gathering information for decisions on a few of those.
  
• MatthiasG’s work on improving our NAnt scripts is progressing: he is working on ways that will enable us to do Builds without Project Files, generating code without Project Files, etc.
• ThomasS is still working on importing generated data to establish a good and big demo database with ‘pseudo-random’ data.
  
• JoachimM is working on restructuring the openPETRA website www.openpetra.org somewhat – we are incorporating several suggestions that came from two reviews of the website. Goals: the website should be even easier to navigate and the content should be better arranged. JoachimM, with the help of other volunteers, is also still working on the Spanish translation of the website.
• WolfgangB is continuing his work on the project plan/estimation, which is a big undertaking for a project the size of openPETRA. Once this is completed, the project plan will be provisional at this stage, but it should give us a clearer picture and vision. It should also encourage fund raisers, other organisations and software developers to join and support the project.

• TimotheusP, WolfgangU, MatthiasG and JoachimM are attending the “International Conference on Computing and Mission (ICCM Europe)” in the Netherlands (http://www.iccm-europe.org/), from Feb. 9th-Feb. 12th, 2011. That’s a good opportunity to meet them in person! TimotheusP is running a workshop themed “Using the Concepts of Development Frameworks” (http://www.iccm-europe.org/index.php/EU2011/Workshops). We are attending this conference primarily to spread the word about openPETRA and to network with other participants. This year there should be more software developers attending and we want to see in which areas we could possibly cooperate.

• openPETRA will have a shared booth at the “Kongress christlicher Fuehrungskraefte” http://www.fuehrungskraeftekongress.de/ at the end of February 2011. You can meet TimotheusP in person there! More details: see last “update” below.

• 28 Bugs got fixed since the last news update.

Thank you for your interest and your support in various ways!

ChristianK for the openPETRA developers