Author Topic: WELCOME  (Read 6895 times)

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Root

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WELCOME
« on: November 06, 2017, 05:50:01 PM »
I would like to welcome everyone to the Open Sage forum. This forum was created to give Sage consultants a way to extend existing customer installs without having to have access to the source code. Sage 100 exposes most of its internal business logic that emulate COM/OLE compatible objects via the ProvideX.Script OCX control.

The doors and windows are open so feel free to join us and share your experiences with MAS90/100 over the years.

If you would like to communicate with me or any of the other members privately, use the forum PM (Private Message) feature.


« Last Edit: January 29, 2018, 07:58:09 PM by admin »

mkaney

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Re: WELCOME
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2018, 09:14:31 AM »
Not too much activity yet but I am excited to find this site.  I have been working since Sage 100/200 since 1999, when I became a consultant for a CPA firm that was a Sage Reseller.  It was my first introduction into the closed, proprietary world of Sage and immediately inspired me to find creative solutions to challenges facing Sage 100 (then MAS 90) users that used more open technologies.  The life of a reseller was not for me though, and I eventually took my newly acquired skills into IT and accounting positions working directly for companies using Sage 100.   Since then I have written a number of useful tools that implement business processes and better user interfaces on top of Sage 100.  I look forward to sharing some of my work and collaborating with others here.

John Spikowski

  • Posts: 34
Re: WELCOME
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2018, 09:27:40 AM »
Thanks for joining and introducing yourself. It was getting pretty lonely here and I was beginning to wonder if my efforts to take advantage of Sage's open API interfaces was justified. The biggest problem I've found is Sage Master Developers have established a price fixing buddy network over the years and don't want anyone messing in their realm with BOI scripting and upsetting the apple cart..

One of the big surprises I ran into doing this is PHP is a great BOI interface if extending 100 to a browser UI interface.


mkaney

  • Posts: 3
Re: WELCOME
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2018, 11:48:35 PM »
I do believe there are a growing number of us out there.  There is a lot of potential to expand the capabilities of Sage 100 and make it useful for more businesses.  With a little creative tinkering, it has the potential to provide an enormous amount of capability for a for a fraction of the cost of some of the larger ERP players.  Sage's insistence on keeping information locked down and pandering to their thoroughly untalented Master Developers seriously limits that potential, though.  They are shooting themselves in the foot with this approach.  With the subscription model play, I think they may actually be digging Sage 100 a grave.

That being said, the limitations of Sage 100 have created a lot of opportunity for me. By figuring out ways around these limitations I have provided a lot of value as an employee of the companies that I've worked for.  My ability to sync business processes with the ERP has allowed me to grow from "database manager" at my current employer into the corporate controller.   

But my work would have been a heck of a lot more enjoyable if there was a community with which I could have shared ideas and challenges with.  I think this might be an opportunity to grow such a community.  You have a great domain name, your approach is one of openness, and you also have brought the added value of your Script BASIC to the table.  In the next post I'll introduce one of my front-end systems for Sage 100, and then in the open source forum I'll post a message with some details on my program that mirrors the Sage 100 data in PostgreSQL.   I wrote (VB.NET) and compiled it using SharpDevelop, an opensource clone of Visual Studio and of course it is designed to work with PostgreSQL which is also open source.

gracie

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Re: WELCOME
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2018, 01:41:03 PM »
I have a feeling this will be a quiet site, but FWIW, it's already been helpful to me. I'm an experienced developer but new to Sage, so it's great to see some documentation and examples.

Root

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Re: WELCOME
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2018, 09:36:10 PM »
Thanks for joining us gracie!

Are you interested in COM/OLE automation as an open API interface to 100 internals?

Have you install Script BASIC yet?

I hope more Sage consultants join us to provide customers with affordable enhancements.