Standard Software Coding in BAAN ERP

Each software component that is developed or customized with BAAN IV Tools must be coded according to the Baan standards. A standard coding system is laid down by Baan for each software component. This chapter describes the coding of all major software components and how they are made uniquely identifiable by means of the language and the package VRC to which they belong.
The coding system combined with the Baan software directory structure provides a consistent means to store and administrate the various software components by package VRC and module codes.
Each software component must be uniquely identifiable. For this purpose, they are named by means of a standard coding system in which the package VRC is also accounted for.



Coding of package VRCs
Every development or customization effort with BAAN IV Tools takes place within a certain package VRC which stands for Version Release Customer extension. In fact, a package VRC is a certain version of a software package.
The BAAN IV application can contain more than one version of the same package. For example, a package VRC containing the standard software of a package and a package VRC containing the customizations for that package.
If a new package VRC is created, it is derived from a previous VRC. To avoid duplication of software, the new VRC only contains those software components which have changed compared to previous VRCs.

In Figure , the upper VRC is a standard VRC of BAAN IV Common, release a. This VRC contains the standard BAAN IV software which is delivered at the moment of installation. The code of a standard VRC contains no customer-specific extension.

The second VRC is an example of a VRC which contains the customer’s own customizations. This VRC only contains the changes regarding the previous VRC. The version field is extended with the character O, which stands for the customer’s own customizations. The maximum length of the customer extension is four characters. It can be filled with, for example, a two character abbreviation of the customer’s name, followed by a sequence number.

The version field can only be extended with one of the following characters:

L Localizations. This type of VRC contains customizations for a certain country.

B Branch-specific customizations. This type of VRC contains customizations for a certain line of business.

C Customer-specific customization. This type of VRC contains customizations, ordered by the customer and developed by a dealer or partner.

O Own customizations. This type of VRC contains customizations developed by the customer.

General codes

General codes are included in the coding of software components. Certain characters are used to specify the general codes to be able to refer to them when the coding of the separate software components is described. For example, mmm which stands for module code and consists of three positions.

Following, a description of the general codes and there possible values is given.

kk - package code

Package codes are defined by Baan in such a way that they indicate the software’s function. Existing packages are:

tc BAAN IV Common

td BAAN IV Distribution

tg BAAN IV Organizer

tf BAAN IV Finance

ti BAAN IV Manufacturing

tp BAAN IV Project

tr BAAN IV Transportation

ts BAAN IV Service

tu BAAN IV Utilities

tt BAAN IV Tools

mmm - module code

The module code indicates the functions within a package and always consists of three characters in lowercase. Since BAAN IV consists of a large amount of modules, only a few example are used to illustrate the coding of modules, namely:

itm Item Control

sls Sales Control

pur Purchase Control

inv Inventory Control

gld General Ledger

f - function code

The function code indicates the type of action performed by the software components in which the function code is incorporated. The following values are used:

1 maintain

2 process

3 (reserved)

4 print

5 display

6 (reserved)

7 graph

8 auxiliary

9 convert

p - process type

The process type indicates whether the software components in which the process type is incorporated is a main process or a subprocess. The following values are used:

m main process

s subprocess

hhh - customization type

The customization type indicates the type of modification that is made on a standard software component. However, for standard software or modifications derived from standard software, the customization type is left blank or given 000 as a value. For newly-developed modifications, the first two positions should be 00 while the last position should contain one of the following values:

o own development by customer

c customization by dealer

l localization

j junior (compact version)

d dealer-specific version

b business-specific version

h - short customization type

In some cases it suffices to only use one of the customization type characters (o, c, l, j, d, b) in the final position of the customization type. For standard software the customization type is omitted.

s - submodule code

The submodule code is used to indicate the type of modification. For newly-developed modifications, one of the following characters is used:

o own development by customer

c customization by dealer

l localization

j junior (compact version)

d dealer-specific version

b business-specific version

Newly-developed modifications are not derived from an existing standard software component but are entirely new.

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