Make your business system sing with ARIA

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Today we look at the ARIA suite of open source ERP, accounting and payroll applications. 

ARIA was developed in 2002 as an offshoot to an earlier open source ERP system called NOLA. The ARIA system includes applications and modules to run an accounting system, an inventory and shipping/receiving database as well as a payroll system.

Like the previously-covered PHP Point of Sale package, ARIA is written in PHP: Hypertext Processor and uses a MySQL database as its backend data store. (PHP originally derived from Personal Home Page Tools and now PHP is a recursive acronym that stands for PHP: Hypertext Processor.)

These are the only two requirements of the system, which allow it to be run on a variety of open source and proprietary servers, from Linux and FreeBSD to Sun and Windows. Apache is the preferred Web server for the system.

ARIA code authors say the system can also be ported to any database platform that supports ADOBD. This will take a little more development elbow grease of course.

ARIA uses a WebB-based GUI for end user data input. Pre-written Web templates can be used to create customized workflow processes and forms. Hardcopy reports, forms and other documentation can be generated in PDF format. Encryption of management tasks and other sensitive transactions can be done with the use of such open source security tools as Mod SSL and Libmcrypt. ARIA developers were kind enough to compile a checklist of other open source tools that are helpful in an ARIA deployment:

* Apache http://www.apache.orghttp://www.openssl.orghttp://www.modssl.orghttps://mcrypt.hellug.gr/https://mcrypt.hellug.gr/https://www.pdflib.com/https://www.gzip.org/zlib/http://www.mysql.comhttp://www.php.net

* OpenSSL

* mod_ssl

* libmcrypt

* mcrypt

* PDFlib

* zlib

* MySQL

* PHP

Next: The last in our series of open source business software platforms.