Stack FAQ

The purpose of this page is to answer frequently asked questions (FAQ) about the chuck-stack.

Is chuck-stack really the name of the project?

Yes and no... Naming a project is hard. chuck-stack is a good starting name given that Chuck Boecking has spent the last 25 years immersed in small-to-medium business ERP, data management, and IT. This project started as result of what we believe to be safe, usable, reliable and performant. If the community believes there is a better name to represent this project, then we will change the name accordingly. That will be a good day!

How do we choose stack components?

See stack-tools.

What are the chuck-stack tools?

See stack-tools.

What are the project guiding principles?

See chuck-stack guiding principles

What is the stack-academy?

See the stack-academy page.

What is a Superclerk?

See superclerk.

Saving Heartbeats

What does this mean? We have a precious few moments on this Earth. We will do everything in our power to preserve your time so that you may spend your remaining "heartbeats" on something that really matters to you.

What is the current status of chuck-stack?

The short answer is: We have been deploying the chuck-stack for more that 10 years. Some parts of the stack are in early alpha. Other parts reached production 15 years ago. Here is a more detailed answer:

iDempiere ERP is the oldest member of the stack. We started deploying it on Linux as early as 2001.
We started deploying PostgreSQL on Linux in 2011.
Metabase BI has been in production for us for the last 4 years.
Nushell has been in production for us for the last 2 years.
dbt has been in production for about 6 months. Note that we have used various ETL tools for the last 10 years.
The AI tools like aichat, are relatively new. Being able to use these tools to change how people interact with data is also new. This style of UI development is in alpha.

Is chuck-stack an ERP?

No, not yet. Here are our thoughts about becoming an ERP:

The biggest hurdle to becoming a viable ERP is data entry.
It is common for an order header to have 90+ columns.
Historically, ERP systems burden users with a sea of fields (representing the 90+ columns).
We do NOT believe this is the best approach because a user will only need to modify three or so fields in a newly drafted order. The remaining fields should just default from either the Business Partner settings or recent orders. Said another way, changing many defaults is the exception, not the rule.
Improving the user experience for the above order scenario is currently our biggest challenge.
Another challenge will be to provide a viable accounting system. In the short term, we will use iDempiere. In the long term, we will use AI and available references to create an accounting system that best supports our stack. Accounting is one of our strongest areas of our ERP practice.

What is capability sandboxing?

Capability Sandboxing is the act of defining roles so well that you can consider them to be a contract and enabling the system to ensure role created automation stays within the confines of the contract.

What are the most important pieces of the chuck-stack application framework?

The two most important pieces of the chuck-stack application are workflow and attributes.

Workflow is critical to data management. However, workflow is notoriously difficult. The concepts can be difficult to learn. The applications are often difficult to install and maintain, and they are either too complicated or overly simple. It is incredibly difficult to create a workflow architecture that is both generic enough and easy enough for broad adoption. AI will change the workflow landscape. What was previously tedious, is becoming a conversation.
Attributes and attribute sets are critical to data management. Being able to tag anything with an attribute, or a set of attributes is one of the most common actions in data management.

Why is the CLI so Important?

See CLI Better Than ...