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The Apache Open For Business Project is an open source enterprise automation software project licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0. By open source enterprise automation we mean: Open Source ERP, Open Source CRM, Open Source E-Business / E-Commerce, Open Source SCM, Open Source MRP, Open Source CMMS/EAM, and so on.

Apache OFBiz is a foundation and starting point for enterprise solutions, be they for one organization or one million. OFBiz can certainly be used OOTB (out of the box), but if you're looking for something that works really well for that there are many open source projects that do a great job there. OFBiz is great for creating specialized applications for use OOTB by other organizations. OFBiz is also great for organizations that need more than what an OOTB application can offer in order to grow their operations, but find the deployment and maintenance costs of traditional enterprise systems that can handle such things to be unreasonable or unjustifiable.

Being open source under the Apache 2.0 license and driven by a community Apache OFBiz offers both flexibility by design and by access to code, and a solution where you're not alone but rather can work with many others to get things done.

Apache OFBiz offers a great deal of functionality, including:

* advanced e-commerce
* catalog management
* promotion & pricing management
* order management (sales & purchase)
* customer management (part of general party management)
* warehouse management
* fulfillment (auto stock moves, batched pick, pack & ship)
* accounting (invoice, payment & billing accounts, fixed assets)
* manufacturing management
* general work effort management (events, tasks, projects, requests, etc)
* content management (for product content, web sites, general content, blogging, forums, etc)
* a maturing Point Of Sales (POS) module using XUI as rich client interface
* and much more all in an open source package!

Project Home Page:
http://ofbiz.apache.org/

Download Apache OFBiz
http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/PQM

hipergate is an open source web based application suite.

It's mission is to cover a full range of technical requirements in any organization. All applications are addresses from Internet Explorer, without needing any other additional software in the client computer.

This suite is multi-company capable, and can be used in a single company, a corporate group or working as an ASP solution capable of serving an unlimited quantity of single customers.

What makes hipergate unique?

* It is completely free.
* It is the only Open Source application with such a wide functional coverage.
* Runs on multiple databases and operating systems
* Has a unitary conceptual design and implementation.
* Is adequate for being used by Application Service Providers.
* Supports multiple languages.
* Has a professional services support network.
* Is well documented.

Hipergate Home Page
http://www.hipergate.org

Download Hipergate
http://www.hipergate.org/download/

Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) is a print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO) and an output independent formatter. It is a Java application that reads a formatting object (FO) tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output. Output formats currently supported include PDF, PS, PCL, AFP, XML (area tree representation), Print, AWT and PNG, and to a lesser extent, RTF and TXT. The primary output target is PDF.

The goals of the Apache FOP project are to deliver an XSL-FO to PDF formatter that is compliant to at least the Basic conformance level described in the W3C Recommendation from 05 December 2006, and that complies with the November 2001 Portable Document Format Specification (Version 1.4) from Adobe Systems.

Conformance to the XML 1.0 Recommendation, XSLT 1.0 Recommendation and the XML Namespaces Recommendation is understood. Other relevant documents, such as the XPath and XLink Working Drafts, are referenced as necessary. The FOP Project will attempt to use the latest version of evolving specifications.

Apache FOP Home Page
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/

Download Apache FOP
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/download.html

iText is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.

iText is an ideal library for developers looking to enhance web- and other applications with dynamic PDF document generation and/or manipulation. iText is not an end-user tool. Typically you won't use it on your Desktop as you would use Acrobat or any other PDF application. Rather, you'll build iText into your own applications so that you can automate the PDF creation and manipulation process. For instance in one or more of the following situations:

* Due to time or size, the PDF documents can't be produced manually.
* The content of the document must be calculated or based on user input.
* The content needs to be customized or personalized.
* The PDF content needs to be served in a web environment.
* Documents are to be created in "batch process" mode.

You can use iText to:

* Serve PDF to a browser
* Generate dynamic documents from XML files or databases
* Use PDF's many interactive features
* Add bookmarks, page numbers, watermarks, etc.
* Split, concatenate, and manipulate PDF pages
* Automate filling out of PDF forms
* Add digital signatures to a PDF file
* And much more...

In short: the iText classes are very useful for people who need to generate read-only, platform independent documents containing text, lists, tables and images; or who want to perform specific manipulations on existing PDF documents. The library is especially useful in combination with Java(TM) technology-based Servlets; there's also a .NET port available: iTextSharp (written in C#).

iText requires JDK 1.4. It's available for free under a multiple license: MPL and LGPL.

iText - Free Java-PDF library Home Page
http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

Download iText Free Java PDF Library
http://www.lowagie.com/iText/download.html

PDFBox is an open source Java PDF library for working with PDF documents. This project allows creation of new PDF documents, manipulation of existing documents and the ability to extract content from documents. PDFBox also includes several command line utilities.

Features
* PDF to text extraction
* Merge PDF Documents
* PDF Document Encryption/Decryption
* Lucene Search Engine Integration
* Fill in form data FDF and XFDF
* Create a PDF from a text file
* Create images from PDF pages
* Print a PDF

PDF Box Home Page
http://www.pdfbox.org/

Download PDF Box
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=78314

Pentaho Reporting is a collection of open source projects primarily focused on the creation, generation and distribution of rich and sophisticated report content from all sources of information.

* Full on-screen print preview;
* Data obtained via Swings TableModel interface (making it easy to print data directly from your application);
* XML-based report definitions;
* Output to the screen, printer or various export formats:
o PDF
o HTML
o CSV
o Excel
o Plain text (including special support for ESC/P and IBM compatible printers)
* Support for servlets (uses the JFreeReport extensions)
* Complete source code included (subject to the GNU LGPL);
* Extensive source code documentation
* Minimal footprint and dependencies
* Unmatched flexibility through a heavily modularized architecture

The Pentaho Report Designer simplifies and streamlines the report creation process, making it easy for report authors to quickly create sophisticated, visually rich reports based upon JFreeReports. It was originally developed by gridvision engineering GmbH and is now developed by Pentaho Corporation provided under the terms of the Mozilla Public License, Version 1.1, or any later version. Features include

* Drag & Drop Report Layout. No need to learn the JFreeReport XML syntax.
* Wizard allows to select data source and create a simple query in an easy to interface.
* View to see the full report structure.
* Powerful, allow access all the JFreeReport functions.
* Live preview of the final Report.
* Create Reports directly on your workstation without the need for a server.
* Live Report Validation always know what's wrong and why, without interrupting your workflow
* Merge Reports: Save common headers and footers as report and import them as you like
* Morph Element field types. Change a text field into a message field with one click.
* Edit multiple elements at once: Change attributes like color and alignment of multiple elements at once.

Pentaho Reporting Home Page
http://reporting.pentaho.org/

Download Pentaho Reporting
http://www.pentaho.com/download/ga.php

The Apache Commons CLI library provides an API for processing command line interfaces.

Commons CLI 1.0 was formed from the merger of ideas and code from three different libraries - Werken, Avalon and Optz. In dealing with the bugs and the feature requests a freshly designed and not backwards compatible CLI 2.0 was created, but never finished or released. Since then a CLI 1.1 bugfix release has been made.

There are currently no plans to continue the 1.x line beyond bugfixes. The 2.x design is generally preferred and is in use, however there is no current activity to make a 2.0 release. To this end, the 1.1 release is recommended to most users while the 2.x line is recommended for anyone interested in helping to get this better API released.

Apache Commons CLI library Home Page
http://commons.apache.org/

Download Apache Commons CLI library
http://commons.apache.org/downloads/download_cli.cgi

Natural CLI is a Java library providing to developers command line interfaces with human readable sentences.

It means, your software can understand easily command lines like the following:

Main Features:

* Java implementation.
* Easy to code. Please, visit the examples page and the Javadocs.
* Type checking for parameters and user defined types.
* Optional parameters and tokens.
* Build-id help command and others.
* Full tested with JUnit.
* Can be compatible with Apache Commons CLI.

Natural CLI Home Page
http://naturalcli.sourceforge.net/

Download Natural CLI
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=208949

args4j is a small Java class library that makes it easy to parse command line options/arguments in your CUI application.

* It makes the command line parsing very easy by using annotations.
* You can generate the usage screen very easily.
* You can generate HTML/XML that lists all options for your documentation.
* Fully supports localization.
* It is designed to parse javac like options (as opposed to GNU-style where ls -lR is considered to have two options l and R.)
* It is licensed under the MIT license.

args4j Home Page
https://args4j.dev.java.net/

Download args4j
https://args4j.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=3330&expandFolder=3330&folderID=0

Apache Axis is an implementation of the SOAP ("Simple Object Access Protocol") submission to W3C.

From the draft W3C specification:

SOAP is a lightweight protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML based protocol that consists of three parts: an envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined datatypes, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses.

This project is a follow-on to the Apache SOAP project.

Apache Axis Home Page
http://ws.apache.org/axis/

Download Apache Axis
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/webservices/axis/trunk/

CRISPY = Communication per Remote Invocation for different kinds of Services via ProxYs.

The intention for this project is a very simple API to call different kinds of services (provider/technology). Crispy's aims is to provide a single point of entry for remote invocation for a wide number of transports: eg. RMI, EJB, JAX-RPC or XML-RPC. It works by using properties to configure a service manager, which is then used to invoke the remote API. Crispy is a simple Java codebase with an API that sits between your client code and the services your code must access. It provides a layer of abstraction to decouple client code from access to a service, as well as its location and underlying implementation. The special on this idea is, that these calls are simple Java object calls (remote or local calls are transparent).

From Crispy supported transport provider are:

* Web-Service (JAX-RPC, for example Axis),
* XML-RPC (for example Apache XML-RPC),
* Burlap and Hessian (Caucho),
* RMI,
* EJB (with JNDI lookup),
* JBoss Remoting,
* REST (REpresentational State Transfer), a Crispy implementation with commons httpclient and
* Http invoker (http call with serializable Java objects), a Crispy implementation with commons httpclient
* CORBA (experimental)

CRISPY Home Page
http://crispy.sourceforge.net/

Download CRISPY
http://crispy.sourceforge.net/download.html

Apache Cocoon is a Spring-based (since version 2.2) framework built around the concepts of separation of concerns and component-based development.

Cocoon implements these concepts around the notion of component pipelines, each component on the pipeline specializing on a particular operation. This makes it possible to use a Lego(tm)-like approach in building web solutions, hooking together components into pipelines, often without any required programming.

Cocoon used as web framework is "web glue for your web application development needs". It is a glue that keeps concerns separate and allows parallel evolution of all aspects of a web application, improving development pace and reducing the chance of conflicts. In particular it makes it easy to support multiple output formats, offers continuation based web controller implementations and comes with a JSR-168 compatible Portal implementation.

Cocoon blocks

A block is the unit of modularization (in comparison: Eclipse uses the term plugins, OSGi bundles) in Cocoon. Everything that goes beyond what Cocoon provides in its core modules (Spring integration, sitemap and pipeline implementation) is provided as block. Custom Cocoon applications are also developed as blocks. A block can provide the following features:

* general servlet services (any servlet can be managed by the Cocoon servlet-service framework),
* special services that provide pipelines as services,
* component services (Spring beans, Avalon services/components),
* a container for classes and resources.

A block is packaged as a Java archive (jar) following certain conventions concerning the directory structure.

General features

* Apache Cocoon is a Spring-based (since version 2.2) framework built around the concepts of separation of concerns and component-based development, ensuring that people can interact and collaborate on a project without stepping on each other toes.
* Cocoon implements these concepts around the notion of component pipelines, each component on the pipeline specializing in a particular operation (usual pipeline uses a Generator, Transformers and a Serializer). This makes it possible to use a Lego(tm)-like approach in building web solutions, hooking together components into pipelines without requiring programming.
* Advanced Control Flow: continuation-based page flow hides the complexity of request/response processing and is cleanly separated from the view and data components.
* Cocoon is open source software (based on the Apache License 2.0).
* Cocoon does not duplicate efforts but tightly integrates many technologies.
* Cocoon is in use at many live sites and on many company networks.
* Cocoon has a strong community, with many active developers and more than plenty of active committers!
* There is free support from the thousands of people on our mailing lists and commercial support is available from various companies and consultants.
* There are many Cocoon sessions at different conferences:
o Cocoon GetTogether
o ApacheCon
o Austrian Cocoon Day
o WJAX
o JAX

Usage scenarios

As you would expect, all of these scenarios can be combined.

* Dynamic multi-channel web publishing (see below for the possible datasources and output formats)
* Create static content (automatically) by separating data from view
* Offline generation modes with Cocoon's own offline facilities: command-line interface (CLI), ant task, bean. Also with Apache Forrest which utilises Cocoon.
* Dynamic document preparation with Apache Forrest, the 'forrest run' mode. Use many different data input formats, see the transformed result immediately in the browser.
* Advanced web applications with J2EE integration (with separation of your data, the view and the flow logic --> this really means you can change one of the parts without touching another)
* Develop your company portal using the Cocoon Portal framework
* Support multiple clients, layouts and languages (i18n) without code duplication
* Integrate Cocoon with your existing web applications or use it to put a better face on them (page scraping)
* Add full-text search to any datasource that can be converted to XML (see below)
* Use Cocoon as the base for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
* Use Cocoon as the base for your Content Management System (CMS) (see Apache Lenya, Daisy CMS and Hippo CMS)
* Use Cocoon for producing mobile content (mobile phones, PDAs)
* Datawarehouse reporting across multiple formats (see xReporter)

Apache Cocoon Home Page
http://cocoon.apache.org/

Download Apache Cocoon
http://cocoon.apache.org/mirror.cgi