As part of the 2.1 release cycle, we are working hard to simplify and streamline the codebase wherever possible. The intent is to increase performance, reduce the number of bugs and make the code easier to understand and maintain.
As part of this effort, we are considering the elimination of two "features" which create (potentially) unnecessary complexity in the code, AND which we believe to be infrequently used...
Store Data for Multiple "Domains" in a Single Database
The current data model allows you to create and maintain separate "data silos" ("domains") in a single CiviCRM database. This concept was derived from Drupal's multi-site table-prefixing model - although it uses foreign keys instead to link each domain's dataset.
Over the past few releases, we have seen quite a few use cases where larger hierarchical organizations want to control access to subsets of their data - based on a user's departmental or regional affiliation and/or role. However - the current domain model does NOT address this issue - since data in each domain is completely separate and there is no concept of hierarchy, inheritance of permissions etc.
Blogs
Keep up-to-date with blogs from the core team, working groups, developers, users and champions worldwide. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates by email. We also have an RSS feed.
May 26, 2008
By shotFiled under The new dedupe engine and UI landed on trunk (development part of our code repository) last week, and we’d be more than happy if you gave it a try on our CiviCRM 2.1 sandbox and let us know how it works for you.
The new dedupe, besides the engine changes described earlier, sports a new user interface. Navigate to Administer CiviCRM → Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts and check out the new admin screens.
May 25, 2008
By lobo Filed under Architecture, CiviCRMEarlier this month Evan posted a query about a CiviCRM AMI for Amazon EC2. Joe Murray responded with some proof of concept scripts along with the persistent storage space limitations in EC2. Seems like the folks at EC2 have been busy addressing these limitations and have introduced persistent storage support for EC2 (its currently in beta).
May 22, 2008
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRM, TeamsTwo new CiviCRM-related articles just got posted on the NTEN.org website - and might be of interest to folks...
Michelle Murrain writes about Open Source CRMs - How Do They Stack Up.
May 20, 2008
By lobo Filed under CiviCRM, TeamsMost of you are probably aware that CiviCRM is developed and maintained by a team of dedicated developers spread around the world (India, Poland, USA and New Zealand). We have had regular team meeting over IM / Skype the past couple of years on a weekly basis. We figured it might make sense to try holding the meeting in a public forum so more community folks can participate in the development and running of CiviCRM.
May 20, 2008
By michaelmcandrew Filed under CiviCRM
If you're in the area, then come along to the first UK CiviCRM usergroup tomorrow at 4pm GMT. It's at Voluntary Action Westminster, 37 Chapel St, London, Greater London, NW1 5DP.
Anyone using / developing / interested in CiviCRM as an ICT professional / non profit employee / volunteer, etc. is welcome to drop by, share success stories, talk through problems, work out how to collaborate better, and be part of future developments. We'll have Dave Greenberg joining us on Skype as the day starts in San Francisco (around 5 or 6pm our time). I'll report back here on how things went.
After London, we plan on touring round the country a bit. Bristol and Manchester to start off. More information in this forum post.
Hope you can join us tomorrow.
Michael
May 20, 2008
By andrew Filed under CiviCRMEarlier today I had the pleasure of presenting and demonstrating CiviCRM to about 40 people working in the non-profit sector at Connecting Up 2008 (see http://www.connectingup.org)
This year's conference had a strong focus on the use of social media, and today's keynote speaker was Beth Kanter, who is well known as a trainer, blogger and consultant on how non-profits can make best use of social media (http://beth.typepad.com).
May 19, 2008
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCase, CiviCRM
Case management is a central activity for a large number of non-profits and NGO's who are current or prospective users of CiviCRM. Basic support for defining cases as a grouping of activities with a "client" was added to CiviCRM 2.0 through the sponsorship of Frontline Defenders. Subsequently, interest has been growing for adding more comprehensive case management support to CiviCRM. Earlier this year Michelle Murrain of NOSI organized a lively discussion list which allowed folks to share ideas about requirements and use cases.
Andrew Clarke, the Executive Director of The Physician Health Program of British Columbia (PHP-BC) was one of the participants in that discussion. PHP-BC provides "advocacy and support for physicians...who are experiencing problems related to personal and family emotional health issues..." They have been looking to replace their current data management system. Recognizing the potential of an open source solution that could both serve his organization's needs AND those of other human service organizations - Andrew advocated and obtained funding to partner with CiviCRM in designing and developing a CiviCase component.
May 18, 2008
By lobo Filed under Architecture, CiviCRM
So i've been looking a bit closely at performance for 2.1 (both database and usability) and am attempting to boost it up significantly compared to 2.0 (and prior). Here are some of the highlights
We've introduced a new database cache table (civicrm_cache) to cache a few database queries that are repeated a lot. Some of the specific queries include listing all the fields available for the contact types (individual/org/household). This is a combination of the built-in fields (name, address etc) and the custom fields added by the user. This reduces the number of queries invoked from 5 complex queries to 1 simple cache query (and an un-serialize)
We've added a column (group_type) to the profile table (civicrm_uf_group), so we know the profile type rather than recompute it every time we need it.
Thanx to Dave Lange who reported and did some analysis on this, we've reduced the number of LOWER( dbColumnName) LIKE 'value' to skip the LOWER part. Email is now stored as lower case, so we can skip the LOWER part in all email comparison. In his tests, these have improved performance a fair bit
Smart Groups
Hierarchical Select
Menu System
DeDupe
We will integrate the ACL changes into core either as a pluggable ACL architecture and/or via the hook system.
Overall 2.1 is shaping up to be a significant improvement over 2.0 :). You can get more details on the 2.1 feature set and release schedule on the CiviCRM v2.1 wiki page.
May 13, 2008
By lobo Filed under Architecture, CiviCRM
One of the core features of CiviCRM is the ability to store a query as a group (smart group). This allows folks to create groups of contacts that share the same attribute(s). For e.g. A group of all the people in California. Thus contacts can be added/edited/deleted from the database, and the smart group will always give you all the contacts who live in CA at that point in time. I suspect this feature is heavily used by quite a few installs.
