Background

The embryo for the OpenHierarchy framework started in 2005 when the founder Robert Olofsson transitioned from PHP-based web development to Java for building the Föräldramötet (Parent meeting) web portal.

The power, scalability and compatibility of Java along with the abundant supply of libraries from the open source community motivated the switch from PHP.

While there were a lot of Java web development frameworks based on the MVC architectural pattern, most of them used long and very static XML configurations and relied on JSP for the presentation layer.

Being a consultant at them time, Robert had worked with most of the major frameworks on the market and decided that he wanted something else. The focus of the new framework, which later got the name OpenHierarchy, was to allow for the structure and business logic to be dynamic and manageable at runtime without any downtime or hacking of XML files.

Robert knew that using JSP for the presentation layer was a bit tedious and primitive. Having previous experience with XSLT based platforms, such as Google GSA and Roxen, he knew that XSLT was both scalable and very rational while at the same time allowed for great internationalization support.

The framework was in constant development from 2005 and although it was not marketed it spread, mostly via friends and colleges. More and more web sites where built on OpenHierarchy and more modules where continually contributed to the project repository by a growing community of developers and users.

When the framework reached version 0.8.0 it was published very quietly on Roberts website unlogic.se for "early access" with at notice that it would move to openhierarchy.org when the version 1.0 was released.

From 2010 the development of the framework accelerated even further as Robert along with his two colleges and fellow OpenHierarchy developers Mattias Hallin and Jonatan Sikström formed Nordic Peak AB which allowed them to fully focus on the development of the framework and various products and e-services built on it.

OpenHierarchy 1.0 was finally released on the 30 of October 2012 along with a new version of the project website: openhierarchy.org.