Why does Bahmni use OpenERP/Odoo?

Hello Team

I’d like to know why Bahmni went with OpenERP and not another more “architecturally aligned” project match such as GrowERP which is based on Apache OFBiz for the following reasons:

  1. Something like GrowERP uses the same technology as OpenELIS and OpenMRS : Java. OpenERP uses Python >> needed knowledge much less.
  2. Open ERP is not really open source anymore now they renamed it to Oodo. Look at the enterprise version. >> Oodo is now reallly expensive.
  3. OFBiz/GrowERP can access the database of OpenELIS and OpenMRS directly, which will ease integration. >> No sync jobs between systems required, the accounting and inventory is automatically updated. Please let me know your thoughts. regards Olie

While we started out Bahmni, we evaluated OpenTaps, OpenBravo and Apache Offbiz as well. We thought that OpenERP that point in time had better network in the geographies (Africa and Asia) we wanted to serve. In addition, OpenERP was significantly easier to setup and get working, compared to the others who might be more comprehensive but definitely required more work/learning/support.

Bahmni’s architecture allows the ERP system to be replaced by any of the above if someone so wishes to do the work, by listening to the event notifications. If someone would want to automate the integrations (and believe me there is no end of integration requirements), they can still do this by just writing event listeners to the feeds.

I am not sure if we would have ever considered database level access to other systems. We wanted to create and promote design that will allow loose coupling, independent systems that can evolve on their own. Hence our reasoning for choosing an Event Driven Architecture. IMO, database level reliance for integration (ETL or so) is probably the hardest coupling mess one can create for evolving systems.

Btw, OpenERP/Odoo has a community edition that is still open source. its LGPL license. There are some enterprise repository containing only the additional modules for paid customers!

Hope this helps.

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Thanks Angshuman, It certainly a lot clearer to me now why the choice was made. The information will help me with my solutions design work.