Most Powerful Open Source ERP

SlapOS Standard Categories

  • Last Update:2011-11-16
  • Version:001
  • Language:en

Before learning how to use ERP5 CRM and ERP5 Trade, we need to configure ERP5 to meet our needs. Initial configuration of ERP5 is based on the concept of "categories". Categories play the same role as taxonomies in document management, but cover a wider function scope in an ERP. Together with some preset data (ex. currency, standard accounts, etc.), they form the base data of an ERP5 configuration. We will review in this chapter each category of an ERP5 configuration which is used to create a SlapOS Master. We shall start with simple categories such as region and nationality, and end with more specific ones, such as role and function. For each category we shall specify if it is part of a predefined standard or part of the SLAP protocol standard, or if it can be freely modified by SlapOS instance. 

 

Nationality

As part of the SLAP standard, the list of nationalities follows the ISO 3166-1 standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1) and the "Countries or areas, codes and abbreviations" of the United Nations Statistics Division (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49alpha.htm). It is a flat list of countries. The ID of each category is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. The reference is the ISO 3166-1 numeric code.

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Region

As part of the SLAP standard, the list of regions follows the ISO 3166-1 standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1) and the "Countries or areas, codes and abbreviations" of the United Nations Statistics Division (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49alpha.htm). It is a hierarchical list of countries grouped by regions defined by United Nations Statistics Division (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm). The ID of each category is the ISO 3166-1 numeric code (because no standard exists for alphanumeric groups of countries). The reference is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, as a way to make a difference to the nationality reference.

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Group

As part of the SLAP standard, a single standard group category "company" is defined to represent the company running the SlapOS site. This company can be divided in divisions, subsidiaries, etc., if required. In addition, some keywords are reserved for important cloud providers who may provide computers to a SlapOS cloud.

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ID        Description
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company   The company or organisation that operates a SlapOS peer
vifib     VIFIB Company
amazon    Amazon group
gandi     GANDI group
rackspace Rackspace group
ovh       OVH group
ibm       IBM group
bull      Bull group

(more groups could be added to the SLAP standard)

Site

As part of the SLAP standard, a single standard site category is defined for the headquarters.

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ID Description
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hq Company headquarters office

Additional sites may be added freely.

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ID Description
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paris Paris Office
tokyo Tokyo Office

In addition, some sites can be added to represent important data centers in the world.

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ID Description
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ec2-ap-ne Amazon EC2 Asia Pacific Northeast
ec2-ap-se Amazon EC2 Asia Pacific Southeast
ec2-us-e Amazon EC2 United States East
ec2-us-w Amazon EC2 United States West
ec2-eu-w Amazon EC2 Europe West
telehouse-voltaire Telehouse Voltaire Datacenter
(more sites could be added to the SLAP standard)

Role

As part of the SLAP standard, some standard roles are defined:

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ID Description
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internal Company staff, company divisions
external External people and companies participating in our company management or projects
member   People or companies registered to SlapOS Master who can purchase hosting services, provide hosting capacity or exchange capacity
host     People or companies willing to host hardware owned by our company and receive a monthly payment in exchange
peer     People or companies operating a SlapOS Master and willing to purchase additional capacity or to sell extra capacity to our company
client   People or companies purchasing other services and products from our company
supplier People or companies providing other products and services to our company including hardware, electricity, real estate, etc.
lead     People or companies which may be contacted as part of sales prospection campaign
prospect People or companies which are being prospected
media    Media people or companies
admin    Government related people and organisations, such as tax office, social security

Most of SlapOS Master security configuration is based on roles. It is possible to add more roles and extend the SLAP standard with company specific roles. However, we doubt that this will ever be needed since most of the configuration can be achieved in reality with functions, as described in the next chapter.

Function

SlapOS functions are designed to make the operation of SlapOS Master quite simple. Some generic categories are introduced (company, division) with no impact on security. Other categories are more specific to SlapOS operations (accounting, sales, marketing, approval, computer, purchase, production) and are used to implement security for staff. The software category is used to categorize prospects and contributors who could use SlapOS to host their software on the cloud. The hosting category is used by organisations and people in charge of providing hosting locations for SlapOS computers. More categories can be added to achieve more details on SlapOS members.

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Activity

A few activities have been defined to segment contacts. The software, hardware and cloud categories are useful to sort the lead and prospect database. This list can be extended to cover more details in market segmentation.

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Product Line

The product line category is used to group products and services purchased or sold by VIFIB per nature (computer, network, commodity). The software category is used to categorize software and possibly help organizing a Web site or an application store.

The "cloud" category is part of the SLAP standard. It provides a standard segmentation of cloud services and introduces the unification between subscription, usage and incident services, both of which may relate to different business models yet appear on the same invoice. It is a key to providing interoperability between different SlapOS peers through default representative services.

ID Description
---------------------------------------------
cloud        Cloud Services
subscription 
usage
incident
configuration
license
support
capacity

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GAP

The GAP category provides taxonomy of financial accounts based on the local tax regulations. An example of GAP category for German AGB is provided below.

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Publication Section

Publication section is used to categorize documents. All contracts can be saved in ERP5 in PDF and attached to the relevant parties. News, press releases and alerts are used to update the Web site dynamically. OEM Pages are used to customize the Web site. Web Pages are those pages which the Web site search engine can search for, beyond documentation, press and news documents.

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Classification

(explain and simplify the classification if needed)

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Skill

Skills are defined in such a way that it is possible to match staff with support requests, which are usually based on language skills. It is also useful to match members one each other and help creating a community around SlapOS.

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CPU Type

The CPU Type category defines the different families of CPU which are available on computers. Each computer model must be associated to a CPU Type.

The first level of CPU Type category defines the instruction set family (ex. x86, arm, etc.). The second level defines the architecture family (ex. 32 bit x86, arm7, arm9, etc.). The third optional level defines the specific microarchitecture (ex. core, nehalem, etc.). The CPU Type is used to select computers capable for running binaries which are specific to a given architecture (ex. Intel 64 bit only).

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CPU Frequency

The CPU Frequency category provides a list of CPU frequencies in the range of 600 MHz- 3400 MHz by steps of 100 MHz. Each computer model may be associated to a CPU Frequency. Selecting specific CPU frequency and architecture may be required to achieve appropriate performance for some applications.

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Memory Type

The Memory Type category defines the type of memory of a computer. Each computer model may be associated to a Memory Type. The first level of Memory Type is the memory architecture (ex. ddr2, ddr3). The second level of Memory Type is the memory frequency expressed in MHz. Selecting specific memory type frequency may be required to achieve appropriate performance for some applications.

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= Memory Size

The Memory Size category defines the size of memory of a computer expressed in GB. Selecting specific memory size frequency may be required to achieve appropriate performance for some applications.

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Storage Interface

The Storage Interface category defines the type of interface of the attached storage. Although it is possible to define multiple interfaces per computer, the intention in SlapOS is to associate a single type of interface and storage technology to each computer partition.

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Storage Technology

The Storage Technology category defines the type of technology which is used to store data. Each computer model may be associated to a Storage Technology. The first level of the category defines the technology family (disk, ram, ssd). The second level defines the specific technology (from 5200 rpm to 15,000 rpm for disks). Selecting storage technology may be required to achieve appropriate performance for some applications, especially for database.

Storage Redundancy

The Storage Redundancy category defines the type of technology which is used to provide a certain level of redundancy and replication at the storage level. Currently, this category is mostly used to select storage which supports one of the standard levels of RAID. However, other redundancy technologies such as Distributed Hash Table could be used in the future.

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Storage Capacity

The Storage Capacity category defines the capacity of storage of the attached storage or the given service. Infinite capacity is represented by the first level category "infinite". It can be used for any storage which can be grown based on requirements. Finite storage capacities are defined through a scale from 10GB to 2TB which corresponds to typical market values.

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Local Area Network Type

The Local Area Network Type category defines the type of network technology which the computer is using to connect to other computers on the same network. This represents mostly the different types of Ethernet attachments, infiniband and wifi. Some computers - such as mobile phones or 3G tablets - may be attached to no local area network. This category is thus optional. Selecting local area network can be used to achieve appropriate network for running certain types of applications which need to communicate at high speed with other computers on the same network.

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Wide Area Network Type

The Wide Area Network Type category is used to describe how a local area network, which a computer is attached to, is attached to the Internet. If multiple connections exist, we take into account here only the "best". The first level of the category describes the type of technology (adsl, fiber, etc.). The second level describes the performance level based on the maximum download speed.

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Allocation Scope

The Allocation Scope category is used to control the allocation process. Thanks to allocation scope, members can decide if and to whom they wish to provide services on their own computers. It also helps scheduling maintenance and termination of a computer in a cleaner way.

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