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by: Bernard Teo








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Wed 14 Mar 2007

Luca 2.5.4

Category : Technology/Luca2dot5dot4.txt

I've updated Luca to work with the OS X 10.4.9 that was just released today.

But, more importantly, this 2.5.4 release of Luca contains a new "Batch Postings" button (see below). One of the problems with transitioning Luca to a "shrink wrapped application", when it used to be a custom-built application that I embed into enterprise systems in my previous life as a custom software vendor, is that I won't be anywhere physically near the system when anything goes wrong with it.

And one of the things that could go wrong is that the accounts stop balancing - due to a program bug or a loop-hole in the assumptions we used to model the business rules. Now, in a custom built application, I would usually be able to go over to the customer's site to trouble-shoot and patch the data to make the accounts balance again.

But it would be difficult to do this once we scale this to support hundreds or thousands of users all over the world.

So, the Batch Postings button allows the user, once he realises from the Trial Balance that the accounts do not balance, to clear the balances and tally up the postings again from each voucher for that particular month. This should get everything to balance again and propagate the corrected balances forward to the following months.

Usually this will be accompanied by a bug fix for the problem that caused the totals to go out of whack in the first place. Between the bug fix release and the "Batch Postings" button, I should be able to let the user go through months of trouble-free usage.

Or at least, that's the plan.

I used to have a utility that allows the user to check the health of the system and to actually pin-point the exact voucher or transaction that caused the accounts not to balance. That's one more thing to put in before I'd feel that I'd gotten Luca to the point where it could take any abuse that a user could throw at it.

Posted at 4:10AM UTC | permalink

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