[Fsf-friends] LINK: Free Software news... from Brazil

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

UNIVATES, a university centre committed to Free Software development

	HIGHER education institutions aim at the advancement of 
	human knowledge and the dissemination of such knowledge.
	Free software is completely aligned with this task.

UNIVATES, a university centre located in the city of Lajeado, 
in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), has adopted Free
Softwareas the basis for its intranet/Internet servers since 1997.

	BY END 1999, Univates started the development of SAGU
	(Portuguese acronym for Sistema Aberto de Gestao
	Unificada, or Open Unified Management System). SAGU
	went live in July 2000 and is now responsible for
	managing the academic and financial relationships
	between students and the varsity. Incidentally, SAGU is also
	the name of a delicious local dessert!

EVEN BEFORE SAGU went live, Univates demonstrated its commitment
to Free Software development by publishing the full source code
of SAGU on the Internet, allowing the coders' community to 
see it evolving. It also provided technology-transfer workshops.

	UNIVATES has saved more than R$500,000 (about US$
	130,000) by *not* acquiring copies of proprietary
	software for servers and desktops. It saves
	R$200,000 (US$70,000) each year on software upgrades
	and maintenance. This is enough to pay the salaries of
	the development group. Meaning, Univates can effectively
	produce technology for its own use (and which others can
	also make use of) at virtually no cost!

THE UNIVATES IT Group is now recognised as the most important
centre of excellence in Free Software development in Brazil.

	SOME OF ITS projects:

	o MIOLO, a set of PHP-based object-oriented database
	connectors, handlers and presentation features that
	allow fast system development even for the most complex
	needs

	It handles transaction and communication between modules
	written using MIOLO, thus making life easier for a 
	programmer who wants to build a system with several
	interdependent modules.

	http://miolo.codigolivre.org.br

	o EasyPHP: a no-database, hassle-free tool for
	creating simple web presence with an easy-to-use
	administrative tool.

	o QUALITAS: document control for quality management systems

	o PILA, bookstore system with front-end point-of-sales,
	stock, catalog and financial sales reports.

	o FRED (content management system), a full-featured system
	for creating services portals for MIOLO-based applns.
	
	o IRRATIONAL TULIP: A group of classes and tools for
	MIOLO application development, such as dia2sql
	(converts database diagrams into SQL database creates and
	inserts), MIOLO-IDE (an IDE for developing GTK	
	applications using MIOLO).

	o CODIGOLIVRE2: Hosting and tools for cooperatively
	developed Free Software.A MIOLO version of the existing
	http://codigolivre.org.br (a SourceForge Brazilian fork
	maintained by UNIVATES).

	o SCOTTY, support calls and customer relationship
	tracking, management and statics system.

GNUTECA http://gnuteca.codigolivre.org.br
GNUTECA is a library automation and catalog-collaboration system.
It includes a circulation control system and, when used in an
educational institution, it integrates with SAGU (though it also
works as a standalone). It is intended to go a step further from
the existing (gratis, but not Free Software) UNESCO CDS/ISIS
program, and it does provide an easy migration path from it. GNUTECA
adheres to all widely-used library standards. It now handles over 
80,000 library items offered to over 6,000 students and teachers.

GNUDATA http://gnudata.codigolivre.org.br
This started as the database support for their regional database
which provides demographic and economic information of 40 cities in
the Taquari River Valley. It is a database framework for 
implementing nearly every kind of database in which you need to get
comparative/statistical information (demographics, etc). It has a
'query auto-pilot' which allows non-technical users to drill down
the database searching for all kinds of stored data. It does
percentages and other calculations which the user may want to
include in queries. The development version also provides graphics.

SAGU - Free Software for academic administration
http://sagu.codigolivre.org.br
It automates the relationship between students and their educational
institution, from the moment a student enrols for an entrance exam
until she graduates.

SAGU subsystems try to mimic the functions of the university. So
it has modules that handle the entrance exam (optical reading of
the student's answers, classification, classroom assignment), the
enrolment process (which courses the student may chose for a given
term, pre-requisites), the academic data (grades, academic
history), financial and accounting data (payments, credits,
scholarships, interface with the bank and other accounting/ERP
systems) and reporting tools. Today, SAGU is being rewritten using
Object Orientation techniques... (MIOLO is also the Portuguese
word for the inner part of the bread, as well as a brand of a very
fine wine produced in southern Brazil!)

AGATA REPORT http://agata.codigolivre.org.br
Agata Report is a report generator with an EIS tool (graph
generation) written in PHP-GTK that allows you to edit and
get SQL results from several databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL,
Oracle, SyBase, MS-SQL, FrontBase, Informix, and InterBase).
It connects to a database, lists its tables and fields, and allows
you to link among tables... The result is exported to a PostScript,
text file or spreadsheets. It's interface has English, Portuguese,
Italian, French, German and Swedish support....

More details from Cesar Brod <cesar at brod.com.br>
www.univates.br or sagu at univates.br
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Frederick Noronha (FN)        | http://www.fredericknoronha.net
Freelance Journalist          | http://www.bytesforall.org
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