Eclipse RCP & OSGi on the Client & Server

Intro

The contract furniture industry like many others features ever-changing requirements that must be reflected in the software used by companies in the industry. RPC Software of Chicago, Illinois has found success in this market by using a foundation of open source software in their products. The company is making use of technologies such as Eclipse RCP, DotProject, and SugarCRM to deliver quicker more cost effective solutions than their competitors. This case study takes a look under the hood of these technologies, the development knowledge gained in their use, and lessons learned

Domain

RPC Software develops ERP order management software used by the furniture industry. Before RPC's product offerings, companies in the industry frequently used proprietary software written in Microsoft Visual Studio languages such as Visual Basic and DOS based solutions and CA's Visual Objects. Companies today are looking for broad solutions that handle many different business activities such as sales, quotes, order entry, time tracking, warehousing, accounting and reporting. As a result, software to satisfy such requirements needs to not only be scalable and robust but also modular in nature.

Like many other industries there has also been a drive in recent years to make information more transparent and accessible to vendors and customers that furniture dealerships interact with on a regular basis. This change is being driven in two main ways. First companies in the industry are moving to open data exchange formats such as OFDA-XML. Second, business processes such as project tracking are reporting and being exposed via web applications to allow cooperating companies to share information.