The Needed Adaptability for ERP Systems - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 204

Figure 3. FME model and their parameterization levels

iMpLeMentAtion of
the fMe ModeL

implementation of event
and Alert sub-system

One of the major challenges of our work was to
promote a practical application of our model. To
achieve such a milestone, 3 sub-systems (Event
and alert sub-system, Interface and Database
frameworks) of our 5 sub-systems have been
implemented on the Portuguese software called
Manufactor. This software is a vertical product
developed by the company Manufactor Solutions
(www.manufactor.pt) and it has been developed
on an object-oriented programming approach (in
this case, Microsoft Visual FoxPro, version 9.0;
named as VFP, from now on), which is highly
important for our model.

Our model aims to promote “local” flexibility
with users to fully provide answers to the usual
and daily needs. To achieve such goal, the FME
model makes it possible to define rules that will
trigger an action. These rules can go from a simple
comparison of fields to complex programming
code (at Manufactor software, XBase code), for
instance, checking data on another server or gath-
ering information from several tables. If the rule
is violated, the software will perform an action
(that can be triggered as an e-mail, XBase code,
data exportation task, external application execu-
tion or internal message sending). The next image
(Figure 4) presents the available scenarios for this
sub-system, for both implementers and users.
A simple example of the XBase code used to
trigger an action is presented next to validate if