Thanks for these good suggestions, looks like its all covered, if I can accept Word as part of the solution. Out of interest I will take a look at Apache Open Office Writer.
On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 11:58 PM, Dan Haywood <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Steve, > > thanks for these thoughts, comments within... > > On 19 August 2015 at 23:05, Stephen Cameron <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hello Isis users, > > > > Just want to mention some ideas that have come up via discussions with > > client. > > > > Sticky Notes / Reminders > > > > The small application I am building is essentially a Client Relationshp > > Management (CRM) system. A big part of it is to schedule interactions > > (mainly just phone calls) to clients into the future and to allocate > those > > to specific volunteers. I'm now interested to make use of the existing > > to-do demo app as part of my project. I've had the idea of making this > > generic so it can be used anywhere to add sticky notes that refer to one > or > > more domain objects, Its an extension of the bookmark idea essentially. > > > > > We have something similar to this in Estatio, namely the concept of an > "Event". The idea is that object can be an "event source", and thus > multiple events - essentially entries in a diary - can be associated with > that domain object. > > Rather than using Isis' bookmarks though ... which don't allow referential > integrity to be enforced at the DB layer ... we have implemented this using > the "poly" addon [2]. This is a pattern that was originally developed on > the big (.NET) naked objects system in Ireland, and so I ported over to > Java and Isis. > > Anyway, rather than reusing the ToDoItem, I suggest you grab the event > package from Estatio and use that instead. > > > > > > > Forms Design. > > > > My client is interested to still have some paper forms, and when this > > subject comes up I always think one aspect of DDD is ultimately to let > > domain experts change their own models. > > > > Maybe this is why MS Access and Excel are so dominant? Also, why people, > > when a system doesn't provide all their needs, find work-arounds that > > usually involve private spreadsheets as secondary data stores. I have > seen > > a few of those in the past week. > > > > So, a legitimate question that arises is "Will we be able to change it or > > do we need to pay an expert?". Being such an expert who wants to be paid > > its easy to say, "sorry you cannot change it, but with Apache Isis its > not > > that costly to add changes, in fact its desirable to do so (so you don't > > end up using spreadsheets)". > > > > Getting to the point, a specific challenge is these paper forms, should > the > > client maintain a Word Document version and a web-based data entry > version? > > Its the same data-model, but the Word Document can be changed by the > client > > and the web-based forms not. Given that web-forms can have a print > > stylesheet associated with them, this seems a sad situation to me. > > > > This is an old chestnut for me, and now again it comes up. I'd like to > try > > solving it in Apache Isis. With its meta-model and via use of an EAV > > database design, or a graph database maybe, this seems possible. > > > > > We do have an addon for this, namely the "docx" add-on [3]. This allows > the template to be authored by the end users in Word (with the Developer > tab enabled), and then programmatically mail-merge in the document. Some > coding is required (though there can be a standard set of fields always > merged in, eg an address or the current user, date, or freeform notes. > > Again, I ported this over from the .NET app, where the design has stood up > well. > > > > > One other solution I have seen is just to add some 'generic' properties > > into the data model entities, that the user can make use of to add things > > as they think of them. Periodically these can be properly renamed (by an > > expert), but it does allow the user to add simple things on the fly. > > > > > Exactly... this is what we do. > > Cheers > Dan > > > > > Regards > > Steve Cameron > > > > > [1] > > https://github.com/estatio/estatio/tree/master/estatioapp/dom/src/main/java/org/estatio/dom/event > [2] https://github.com/isisaddons/isis-module-poly > [3] https://github.com/isisaddons/isis-module-docx >
