As Kevin said, make sure your user has all the necessary rights under the "user" menu. Checking the box with technical options being the foremost important. I don't know if you use OpenERP 7, but I found out if you got to the right upper menu in the web client - and choose "about OpenERP", you can find the "activate Developper's mode" button.

You can enter debug mode with this and execute various upper-level actions.