Presentation I did at the Linuxdagen 2007 in Oslo (http://www.linuxdagen.no). Covers Achievo ATK, but also some background info on running an open source project (may 7th, 2007).

1. Achievo ATK – An Open Source Project
Ivo Jansch <ivo@ibuildings.nl>
Ibuildings.nl BV

2. Agenda
• About Ibuildings
• About the ATK framework
• Demo
• Running an open source project
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3. About Ibuildings.nl
• Company
 Founded in 1999
 Based in the Netherlands
 Today: 40+ employees in 3 offices (Vlissingen,
Rotterdam and Sittard)
 Technology (open source) background
• Main activities
 Technology & Development
 Communication & Marketing
 Business Solutions
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4. Technology at Ibuildings
• Software engineering
 Strong focus on solid software engineering practices
• PHP as a strategic development platform
 All developers are Zend Certified Engineers
 Actively contributing to the Open Source community
• Zend partnership
 Official Zend Representative for the Benelux
 PHP and Zend Training
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5. ATK Application Framework
• Achievo ATK is an object oriented Web
Application Framework, written in PHP
• Business application development
• Targeted at developers who wish to focus on
business logic, instead of coding HTML
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6. ATK philosophy
• Very Rapid Application Development
Code minimization (10 lines of code…)

“Don’t reinvent the wheel”

“Don’t Repeat Yourself” principle

80/20 rule

• Versatile
Supports many databases

Runs out of the box

Dependencies are bundled

PHP4 / PHP5

• Customizable
 Modular system
 Customize ATK
 Customize your own software
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7. ATK features
• For the user
Uniform interface

CRUD functionality

Data search functionality

Themes

Internationalization (15+ languages)

AJAX features

• For the developer
Database abstraction layer (MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL)

Relationship modeling (e.g. 1:N, N:1, N:M db relations)

Flexible authentication & authorization

Application session management

Out of the box, but 100% customizable

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8. ATK is NOT…
• A component framework
 Zend Framework
 ezComponents
 PEAR
• These provide components to build applications
• ATK builds the application
• A CMS
 But you can build one with ATK
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9. ATK Demo
Demo…
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10. History
• Startup company
 Software can be expensive
• Open Source minded
 ‘LAMP’ based company
• Scratching an itch
 Administration
• Achievo Project Management
 First open source release in April 2000
 Initial release: ‘How not to write software’
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11. History (2)
• Something was not right
 Community feedback (a lot of feature requests)
 Customization needs
 Code duplication, spaghetti
• Complete rewrite
 Software Engineering + OO
 Model driven approach
=> ATK born
• Breaking loose of Achievo
 All Ibuildings software based on ATK since 2001
 ATK released as separate OS project in 2004
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12. Business Model
• Knowledge based model
 Support
 Training
 Paid enhancements
• License based model
 Commercial licensing
 Dual licensing
• Indirect model
 Projects
 Other products (CMS, dotcoms)
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13. Development Model
• Evolutionary development
 Grow as needed
 Community contributions
• Generalization
 Careful selection of development layer
 Need something twice -> generalize
• Quality control
 Unit Testing
 Sheriffs
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14. Setting up a community
• Tools
Website

Source Control

Forum

Bugtracker

Wiki

Build automation (nightlies, releases)

• Release guidelines
 Release something that works
 Out of the box
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15. Setting up a community (2)
• Keeping users happy
Document the software

Help the users

Stay in touch

Maintain backwardscompatibility

• Marketing
 Make sure you are found
 Get linked
 Watch the competition
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16. More info
• Visit these websites for more information about
Ibuildings and the ATK framework:
 http://www.ibuildings.nl
 http://www.achievo.org/atk
 http://www.achievo.org/blog
• ivo@ibuildings.nl
• Thank you!
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