Now that you have discovered some of the many possibilities of OpenERP from a tour of the demonstration database, you will develop a real case. An empty database provides the starting point for testing a classic workflow from product sales to purchase, completing your guided tour and your getting familiar with OpenERP.
A database loaded with demonstration data is very useful to understand OpenERP’s general capabilities. But to explore OpenERP through a lens of your own company’s needs, you should start with an empty database. You will work in this chapter on a minimal database containing no demonstration data, so that there is no confusion about what you created. You will keep the database you have created, to allow you to build on it throughout the rest of this book if you want to.
You will develop a real case through the following phases:
- Specify a real case;
- Describe the functional needs;
- Configure the system with the essential modules;
- Carry out the necessary data loading;
- Test the system with your database.
The case is deliberately simple to provide you with a foundation for the more complex situations you might have to handle in your company. Throughout this chapter, we assume that you access OpenERP through its web interface. And it is also assumed (as in the rest of this book) that you are using the latest download of OpenERP version 6, the stable production version at the time of writing (not the trunk version, which is likely to have new and potentially unstable features).