With the release of version 1.0 and this Drupal-powered web site, we are adopting a more collaborative process to increase the number of people contributing to the growth of the ODB project.

We do hope to find a few more developers to assist in porting the source code to a more modern version of Basic that will make ODB cross-platform and database independent.

At the same time, we expect that most improvements will come from people using ODB who had an institutional need to extend it. If you are a volunteer or consultant whose organization is enhancing ODB, please let us know about additional features, documentation, reports, or translations you have added. We very often incorporate these into the main project.

The forums below are designed to answer technical questions about enhancing ODB.

The source code for ODB 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0 is available at our Sourceforge site. The source can be compiled in less than a minute using a modern PC loaded with VB5 or VB6. While these development environments are not free, used copies of Visual Studio can be purchased for under $75 nowadays! Please note that the service pack for VB5 can still be obtained here, and that you will need to also install the control licensing fix provided by Microsoft if you are using VB5. Finally, check this out if you are using VS5 under XP.

While you are welcome to just dive in and start posting questions or enhancements relating to the code, the reporting capabilities, or the documentation in the appropriate forum, please also recognize that the ODB project is in need of coordinators who can help steer work in particular areas.

Thus we have created an initial list of task areas, each of which could use a coordinator or maintainer. The coordinator/maintainer is simply a person responsible for maintaining a web page providing background information, status information, and a to-do list for that task area. Next to each task area is a percentage which indicates the extent to which that task area is "staffed." Most task areas will be at 0% initially, and will remain at 0% until there is a coordinator/maintainer willing to help facilitate communication among future volunteers.

If you are interested in becoming a coordinator, please email us at support <at> organizersdb.org.

Ways to Help: current needs of the ODB project

• Development of custom reports (20%)
• Development of scripts and APIs to integrate ODB with other applications, and online fundraising platforms(20%)
• Spanish Translation (60%)
• Development of New Installer (50%)
• Visual Basic Debugging and Maintenance (20%)
• Development of a Cross Platform, Unicode Version (10%)
• Mysql/Postgres Abstraction Layer (0%)

ODB Development Documentation and Resources

• Source Code Repository for ODB Program (100%)
• Source Code Repository for Install Scripts (80%)
• Database Schemas for Current ODB (100%)
• Roadmap for ODB Future Development (80%)
• API Proposals and Documents (0%)

ODB Developer Discussions

Forum	Topics	Posts	Last post
Advanced Customizations Post questions on customizations related to database access, languages, encryption, integration, etc.	6	21	6 weeks 3 days ago by Claire
ODB Report Writers Forum A place to share information and sample reports using the ODB report writer extension	3	15	n/a

Other Developer Topics to be added soon:

• Discussion of Integration with Other Software
• Discussion of RealBasic Port (not yet active)
• Discussion for Documentation Developers (not yet active)