vtiger

[audiopleb]

If vtiger made a "jitterpack" for jitterbit it might just make it more appealing to people trying to do integrations you know. Also it would help people get round how the database works a bit better.

Just a thought!

[audiopleb]

Actually thinking about it, this could be a great way of migrating sugar users to vtiger.

Hmmm, if i (or someone else) could work this out this could even be like a hosted service.

Someone could come to me (or vtiger) and say they want to migrate from sugar, you could say fine, tell me the access details to the databases of the two installations and we will do it for you overnight.

You could even run the two systems in parallel for them whilst they get used to it whilst maintaining data integrity.

Wow, what a great idea.

[dfwGreg]

I've been looking all over for a relatively painless way to start hooking vTiger up to other apps (Weberp, netoffice, etc).

Jitterbit seems to be the way to go! With just a simple API, db access or basic webservice front end (like sugar has) we could really create some powerfull "mashups"!

I lean to webservices, but I doubt those are ready. That leaves calling DB routines or just plugging into the DB directly.

Does anyone from vTiger know which method would work best using 5.03?

[stuzenz]

Thanks for the heads up on Jitterbit.

I checked it out after reading the above posts. It seems to be a well thought out integrating tool. It is something along the lines of open source middleware to be used as an enabler to pull together heterogeneous data sources. Or a simple way to do some webservices (kind of like following a wizard while hiding and managing some layers of the framework for you.)

I agree that it would be good if work could be done on a jitterpack for vtiger. Personally, I don't have a lot of use for it at this stage, but I can understand that there must be a reasonable amount of untapped need for it from vTiger users who are not aware that the tool exists.

After going through the first tutorial I was left wondering on how many methods exist to trigger the operations - the only one I found was based on scheduling. Which to be honest is fine for a management tool like vTiger (I can't see why vTiger would need real-time data - lagged updates by a couple of minutes shouldn't be a problem for most users.)

It definitely seems worth investigating how the tool can be utilized. My understanding is there may be a fair effort involved in creating the vtiger jitterpack though. And, then there it seems we would either need an existing jitterpack for the application we were trying to integrate with or if it didn't exist we would have to create the jitterpack for that application as well.

Finally, there is a reasonably good summary at
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/15/77896_20FEstartups8_1.html

All looks good - but it would come down to a needs exceeds the efforts required prognosis to truly make the tool worthwhile

My 2 cents.

Stuart

[indigoleopard]

We will have a look at it post the 5.0.3 release.
Anything that makes life easier, is my area of concern ;-)!

Richie

[krem]

Hello,

Jitterbit seems very interesting, but I have some difficulties to understand the how and why to use it.. Is it a tool enabling to migrate from one system to another? or is it capable to synchronize 2 different softwares (like sales order-vTiger and sales order in web-erp)...

If somebody could give a practical example of what it can do, it would help me to have the big picture.

Thanks,
Clem

[stuzenz]

Clem,

It my understanding that it is the latter. An integration tool - not just migration tool. Think more webservices.

Jitterbit has its own runtime engine and can be used to deploy web services.

The Jitterpacks are defined on their site as:
Jitterpaks are pre-defined, reusable integration solutions for Jitterbit. Jitterpaks include all the details required for a specific integration (i.e. a CRM app to a Web Service.), including the document definitions, transformation rules, and source and target systems.

I have not understood it all either.

I think the Jitterbit community is still coming to grips with how to best utilize the technology. I have been going through some of the same confusion as yourself on what the technology actually does.

They do have a solutions example on the site. The flash demo give you a small idea on what they are doing
http://www.jitterbit.com/Solutions/salesforce.php

It seems that there is a bit of a learning curve and a bit of work. The advantages of using Jitterbit is that it removes the issues of dealing with some of the layers of the web services framework and it also works towards getting useful definitions and logic built into reusable jitterpacks for community consumption.

Not sure if this helps .... but that is about what I got from what I looked at.

regds,
Stuart

[krem]

Thanks for your explanation, I had a look as well to their flash demo, but it didn't help much.

I should focus first on understanding more the webservices concept, in theorie I get what it is about (Web service is a system designed to support interoperable Machine to Machine interaction over a network), but still in practice, I have difficulties to see how it works.

I guess I should get back to uni for a couple of days ;)
If somebody has a jitterbit studie case to explain step by step, and what would be the practical output(what changes for the end user?), it would be appreciated.

Regards,
Clem