Onyx ERP Prototype
Onyx was developed during 1993 - 1994 together with Peter Tuleby. It was designed to show how an ERP application could look if designed from the ground up with an object-oriented, client-server core using a (for the time) modern graphical user interface. Inventory management, product structure definition and cost calculation was implemented together with most of the basic data needed for shop orders, sales and purchasing.
Most of the work was done in the area of user interface design and navigation, database engine and business entity object modelling. It became very obvious that you need to rethink the data model around the possibilities introduced by a fully featured GUI, including drag-n-drop, scrollbars etc.
Unfortunately, since the people involved were not sales-oriented, the product never went beyond the prototype state. Also, my current employment prohibits me from working with a successor to the project.
As a byproduct, we developed our own RDBMS based on B*Tree and the DBase®
file format, complete with SQL parser and report generator. This was a huge learning experience
in itself.
Downloadable presentation coming soon.