My abstract take on the topic... My take on this topic was for the longest time very similar to Jacopo's answer. However, as I've personally moved further and further down the learning curve and witnessed OFBiz mature month to month, my take on this has changed slightly. My take has changed even more so in light of the great work Adrian has done to enhance the widgets and the relatively recent addition of the <include> element in the site-confs. These improvements make customization so much easier that it pushes OFBiz applications in my mind as examples as opposed to solutions which is much better for the community.
Given the following caveats, which I believe are pretty solid as we've seen quite a bit of disappointment from those who have come and gone from the community when these are not understood amply. If these caveats aren't correct then obviously my line of abstract thinking isn't either. 1) The application components are to be generic representations of common business practices 2) There are very few companies that will be able to use OFBiz applications OOTB regardless of the amount effort put into the applications 3) Every company has too many specific needs to rely on a cookie cutter approach to handle their business on the whole. 4) OFBiz should not be used in a mission critical environment without ample needs analysis The application components should ideally convey the following information in order of importance. 1) A robust data model that can maintain the majority (if not all) of data regarding the particular business concept and their relationships to other business concepts. 2) An array of services that can maintain a majority of the business processes for that business concept. 3) Stability 4) Security 5) Scalability Those 5 are appropriate goals for the core components because they do not necessitate thinking of a particular user. The last three on the list are likely the first three on a list for the framework. (that covers Stable and Universal on Jacopo's list) Easy to customize comes from adhering more to the following concepts 1) M-V-C model 2) Semantic Markup 3) Greater use of Widgets 4) Separation of templates so that each does one thing, and one thing well OFBiz does well here, but there's always room for improvement. I consider user-friendliness to be the last thought with regard to the base applications, but at the top of the list for the specialized apps. If user-friendliness interferes at all with demonstrating business concepts or business processes, it shouldn't be added to the base applications regardless of the amount of benefit it may show. The reason for this is simply the concept of user-friendly predicates that you have a user in mind. There is certainly benefit in user-friendliness but that's best demonstrated in specialized apps. Thanks for the feedback! ,Chris --- Chris Howe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hey All, > > There has been some light discussion in > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-822 on how the > application > components are maintained, their goals, and their direction. I'd like > to get some feedback as to how the larger community feels on these > topics. > >
