BDDMockito.given(mock.someMethod(argMock)).willReturn(argMock);
BDDMockito.given(mock.someMethod(anotherArgMock)).willReturn(anotherArgMock);
...
BDDMockito.given(mock.someMethod(yetAnotherArg)).willReturn(yetAnotherArg);

What to do if you have a lot of objects to be passed into someMethod(..) and you do not want to stub every possible invocations?

The answer is the Answer,
Mockito’s Answer!

Answers specifies an action that is executed and a return value that is returned when you interact with the mock.

Let stub our method in the Answer manner:

BDDMockito.given(mock.someMethod(Mockito.any(T.class))).willAnswer(new Answer() {

});

From now, every mockT.someMethod(..) invocation will return passed argument.

Tip: Effectively stubbing with Mockito is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

First look at the conventional way to understand why we introduced this new feature:

Conventional old way:

Until recently to obtain bidirectional „many to many” relationship you had to:

1. Create an additional, “join entity” model in XML, with two fields of type belongsTo – pointers to each of the 2 entities that we want to bind.
2. In both of them we had to create new fields of type hasMany pointing to (previously created) join entity.

Let’s examine an example of orders and material requirements. We need three entities – order, materialReq, and the entity that binds them together – materialReqOrderComponent:

which is expressed in below XMLs:

order.xml

<model name="order" ...>
    <fields>
        <hasMany name="materialReqOrderComponents"
            joinField="order"
            model="materialReqOrderComponent"
            cascade="delete" />
           <!-- other fields -->
    </fields>
    <hooks/>
</model>

materialReq.xml

<model name="materialReq" ...>
    <fields>
        <hasMany name="materialReqOrderComponents"
            joinField="materialReq"
            model="materialReqOrderComponent"
            cascade="delete" />
           <!-- other fields -->
    </fields>
    <hooks/>
</model>

materialReqComponent.xml

<model name="materialReqOrderComponent" ...>
    <fields>
        <belongsTo name="order"
            model="order"
            required="true" />
        <belongsTo name="materialReq"
            model="materialReq"
            required="true" />
    </fields>
    <hooks/>
</model>

The main disadvantage of this is need to manually manage join entities – every time you want to create/update/delete one of two related entities or change relationship, linking them together, you need to perform create/update/delete operation on the joining entity (materialReqOrderComponent).
For Example: To bind materialReq with two additional orders (order1 and order2) you must use following code:

Entity matReqOrderComp1 = matReqOrderComponentDataDef.create();
matReqOrderComp1.setField(„order”, order1);
matReqOrderComp1.setField(„materialReq”, materialReq);
matReqOrderComponentDataDef.save(matReqOrderComponent1);

Entity matReqOrderComp2 = matReqOrderComponentDataDef.create();
matReqOrderComp2.setField(„order”, order2);
matReqOrderComp2.setField(„materialReq”, materialReq);
matReqOrderComponentDataDef.save(matReqOrderComponent2);

We’ve moved this responsibility from developers to the qcadoo Framework, so that they don’t have to worry about managing join entities.

The new way:

To combine two entities just use a manyToMany field in both XML models. qcadoo Framework takes care of the rest.

order.xml

<model name="order" ...>
    <fields>
           <manyToMany name="materialReqs"
            joinField="orders"
            model="order" />
           <!-- other fields -->
    </fields>
    <hooks/>
</model>

materialReq.xml

<model name="materialReq" ...>
    <fields>
          <manyToMany name="orders"
            joinField="materialReqs"
            model="order" />
           <!-- other fields -->
    </fields>
    <hooks/>
</model>

The attribute joinField must include the name of corresponding field on the other side of relationship.

Diagram of this situation is as follows:

To get the contents of field, use Entity.getManyToManyField(String fieldName) which returns a list of related entities.

To perform the same task (assign few orders to materialReq) as in the previous example, the following four lines are sufficient:

List orders = materialReq.getManyToManyField(„orders”);
orders.add(order1);
orders.add(order2);
materialReq.setField(„orders”, orders);

This solution makes qcadoo Framework even more intuitive.

Read more about in Qcadoo Developer Documentation

Many-to-many relationships in qcadoo Framework is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

First at the beginning of the month we ware in Szczecin on the Open Radar conference organised by ITC Promorze Zachodznie and Szluug.org. I (Adam Walczak) gave two lectures there: one about my book on organisational structures and business models found in open source projects and the second one about the qcadoo project. Both ware in english and are available on our youtube channel.

Secondly we drove rigth back to Poznań for the annual P.I.W.O event organised by Poznań University of Technology. There we talked about open source software in the business sector and of course about our manufacturing management system.

Last but not least we ware on the second conference organized by the polish free and open source software foundation FWiOO and their spinacz.edu.pl project. It was also in Poznań and we gave there a short lecture about business models used  in open source. We also pointed out which ones we use in Qcadoo Limited.

3 open source conferences in one month is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

• Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak – OpenStreatMap  activist
• Kamil Porembiński – OSWorld.pl owner
• Robert Partyk – Creative Commons book publisher

Qcadoo Limited sponsored 40 copies of my book on organizational and business aspects of open source which we give away on the conference. I also started talks with Kamil, Robert and my boss about publishing the book worldwide.

As for our seminar we talked how we embrace the concepts of the cloud, PaaS, frameworks, open source and partner networks in the qcadoo project. Video in polish below.

You can find recordings from all the seminars on OSWorld.pl.

Our seminar from Linux Autumn 2011 is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

The role of innovative open source projects in the Polish economy

There are many photos and videos from it which you might find quite interesting. Two of the most interesting lectures ware given by our Polish Vice Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak and the CEO of the Free Software Foundation Europe, Karsten Gerloff

Of course people from qcadoo could not miss such an event as we are one of the biggest open source business software projects in Poland We put out a stand with the qcadoo MES demo and give away printed versions of two articles from our blogs:

• Is the cloud a new system architecture ?
• Zero lock-in – how partner networks and open source guarantee the IT independence of your enterprise

These articles got so popular at the conference that I had to run away from one lecture to print some more

During the conference we meet many IT specialists and open source enthusiasts. We hope that in the near future we’ll be able to implement the ideas that we discussed there.

You can see more photos and read more about the conference in the FWiOO article.

You can also watch the lectures on the OSWorld.pl page.

Notes from the first Polish free and open software foundation conference is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

In this post will give you a short summary of the most important analysis and design efforts that are taking place there. We are always happy to hear your feedback so please feel free to comment and even edit those blueprints.

Production scheduling on the level of operations, workstations and workers

This is probably the most important new module we have scheduled in our roadmap. For now you can plan production orders in the Gantt chart and calculate how long will they take if they ware to be executed independently. If we introduce the concept of tasks and resource capacity then we will be able to do very precise calculations how long a new order should take in the context of the current orders. This will also introduce detail plans which indicate what and when should a workstation/worker produce

This concept is separated into to blueprints:

• MPS – Manual production scheduling
• SPS – Semi-automatic production scheduling

We have been designing this functionality with Jacek Wrodarczyk from the JAVRO company (www.javro.pl) and we are very grateful for his help. The blueprints are written in Polish but we can translate then on demand.

Product type with attributes and unit conversions

We want to enhance the basic data module to support products with attributes and automatic unit conversions. For example lets say we have a product type called Oak floor boards with the following attributes:

•     width: 16, 22
•     length: 90, 110, 120, 130, 140, 145, 150-170
•     sort class: Prima, Natur, Polar, Rustik A, Rustik B

This can be translated to a unique products like Oak floor board, Polar 22×130.

This functionality is separated into two blueprints:

• PTU – Product type with attributes and unit conversions
• PTU-EX – Extensions to product types, attributes and unit conversions

By knowing the properties of a product and their values we can do many cool things:

• more complex unit conversion like from square meters to cubic meters for example
• reports in which we aggregate data for product types (like  Materials in stock area of an product type)
• create more flexible technology definitions which accept additional parameters and propagate them on inputs and outputs of operations (see TIP – Technology instance parametrisation)

Material flow module is maturing

It was previously known as the Inventory Module. We planed some features that will convert it into a complete solution to track the flow of materials in you production like and use this data in other process in the system.

• we want to add Material flow – transformations
• test a Material flow – Data Collector GUI for cheap HTML5 enabled devices
• and add new summary reports

Framework enhancements for better usability

• better jumping between tables and views thanks to Navigation enhancements
• more powerful data sets in tables with Custom dataset in tables
• adding plugins will be faster and more stable if we implement a New system restart mechanism

Work in progress Module

We started an early attempt to design a Work in progress Module with which production line workers can manufacture interactively with the system. This module should control if a worker on a workstation is using the right components, show instructions for the current task and collect data in real time. See WIP – Work in progress.

Many other improvments

There are also many other smaller blueprints. Please see the New concepts page on our Blueprints wiki. We can’t wait to hear your feedback so don’t hesitate to leave us a comment or start a discussion on the forums. You can also start your own blueprint on that wiki.

Dozens of new plans on Blueprints wiki is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

Alina Brauer joined us about 3 month ago. First she helped us in with some research in another project and then started to develop new modules with the core team.

At the beginning of the summer Marcin Kubala came on the scene and developed the Order Groups Module from top to bottom. He also fixed some framework bugs while doing it.

Both Alina and Marcin ware also heavily involved in the development of the Cost Calculations Module which are just hitting the qcadoo MES 0.4.7 unstable release.

Last but not least Andrzej Kiełtyka appeared on our payroll after helping us heavily with multiple reports and improvements around the system.

But besides those three there ware also lots of other interns that took part in the project and we are truly grateful for that.

Many thanks to:

• Michał Kasperczyk for fighting with the API of the qcadoo Framework which was still unstable when he came.
• Kacper Marek for tests, creating the Used Products Module and Stoppages Module.
• Ula Baranowska for helping in testing, creating the Produced Products Module and Production Balance Report
• Iwo Kosowski-Banasiak for testing qcadoo MES, expanding its documentation and doing some research on the latest memory management improvements of   Tomcat 7.
• Łukasz Libront for finishing the Inventory Module and adding some improvements to the framework.

and other students helped us in other ways.

There ware also some individuals that singed up but never came to the internship and some ware just lazy But in general the program was a very nice experience.

Currently we have three interns on board which are mainly helping us with quality assurance. We’ll still continue to accept students which want to be mentored by our developers and learn how to program in qcadoo. But we are rising the bar a little and we will require new interns to already have good knowledge of Spring, Hibernate, Log4J or other similar Java technologies. But remember that you can always participate in our project in less technical tasks like user tests, expanding the documentation or promote our initiatives.

More information about the internship program can be found here.

3 interns hired in our open source project is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

Is it really a technical term or just a marketing slogan ?

According to the father of the free software movement Richard Stallman:

It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign.

You can also find similar opinions on the other side of the barricade. For example CEO of the Oracle Corporation Larry Ellison starts by saying that:

It’s nonsense and water vapor

and follows it by 4 minutes of jokes about clueless cloud advocates

But shortly after dismissing the cloud both move to quite technical arguments. So there seams to be some technical flavor which is carried with the term.

Stallman points out that by buying software or platforms as a service you totally loose control over them. This is true but isn’t this the point of buying it as a service. We just want it to work. We don’t want to maintain and tweak it by our selfs.

On the other hand Ellisons argument is that the cloud is nothing new and we’ve been doing it since the 90′. This also seams to be true. But we think that just now technologies and concepts identified with the cloud became available to the majority of developers and got popularized with the web. Probably thats why they got that catchy name.

So what are those concepts that got swallowed up by the cloud ?

What can this term mean if a client drops it into your projects requirements ?

Here in the qcadoo project we view the cloud as a synergy of the following concepts:

Let’s have a look on the components listed on this image:

• IaaS – virtual infrastructure capable of auto-scaling and auto-balancing
• PaaS – platform providers which handle scalable deployments and configuration for the developer by utilizing IaaS providers or their own infrastructure
• SaaS – software providers which do not require any installation, configuration nor maintenance from its users
• Marketplace – stores in which users can easily buy and install applications for their devices with one click of a button
• Web API – open integration points that glue all these layers and are available to other systems
• Micro-billings – developers and clients pay for just what they use: CPU cycles, bandwidth, modules, features, user accounts, etc.

This looks like a very complete and clean system architecture doesn’t it ?

So may be we can view the cloud as a certain flavor of systems that follow this pattern. If your talking with a client that wants you to develop a cloud app for him then this image we shown above is actually a good tool to show him . It can help you decompose the term in to strict technical requirements and check what the client really wants.

This cloud architecture is actually our long term vision for the qcadoo MES project. But we think that not all of its components should be general purpose tools. There are some signals one the web that Marketplaces and PaaS are becoming specialized for a certain business sector or usage domain (beside just the users device). We believe that this may be a sign of Cloud 2.0 to come.

As for the qcadoo MES project our goal architecture looks like this:

The above components represent:

• qcadoo Framework – which lets you rapidly develop highly modular business web applications in Java and XML. It’s open source, provided as PaaS for qcadoo MES modules and also available for independent commercial projects in a scalable pricing scheme.
• qcadoo MES – a modular manufacturing management system composed mostly of open source source modules. Preferably sold as an online web application but also available as a standalone application in the Community and Enterprise Edition. Both editions are usable in manufacturing companies. The Enterprise Edition has some additional modules for integration with proprietary systems and equipment.
• qcooStore – an app store in which you can buy modules for qcadoo MES and solutions for the manufacturing business which are integrated with the system. This is the place where we distribute software build by the projects community and our partner network with services provided from Qcadoo Limited.
• Micro-billings – all those components will be integrated in a micro billings system in which users pay for just the modules they use and partners earn money from their modules.

As for the Web API the system does not provide one unified global interface. But we encourage third parties to develop modules that expose the integration points they need.

See more of our vision of the cloud architecture and qcadoo MES in the presentation: qcadoo an open source invasion on the manufacturing business, frameworks PaaS

The cloud as a system architecture is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

To ease the installation process a little one of our community members Iwo Kosowski-Banasiak has prepared a set of video tutorials:

• English Video – Installation on Windows
• English Video – Installation on Ubuntu
• Polish Video – Instalacja na Windows
• Polish Video – Instalacja na Ubuntu

Each shows step by step how to install qcadoo MES. Choose them depenting on your preferred language and operating system.

We hope this will help.

Installation video tutorials is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog

We have talked about our business and product vision, the projects organization, the open source community and partner network, the technology and qcadoo Framework, and also about security in the cloud.

Please have a look at then if you understand Polish.

You can see the original OSWorld post here

o biznesie oraz produkcie qcadoo MES

o projekcie, Open Source oraz sieci partnerskiej

o technologii oraz platformie qcadoo Framework

o bezpieczeństwie w chmurze

An interview with us done by OSWorld.pl is a post from: Qcadoo tech blog