Great!
在 2009-06-11四的 04:03 -0600，David E Jones写道：
> The last major priority that I pushed on was clean ups and
> enhancements to the framework. While there are still some big
> improvements coming along (new authorization approach and more AJAX/
> etc stuff come to mind), I think we've made huge progress on that and
> the framework is significantly cleaner and far more helpful when
> writing business applications.
>
> I've mentioned this a little bit and started putting some seed
> material together, and the next high level priority that I'd like to
> work on (and work with others on!) is to add collaboration on
> requirements and designs to our existing excellent collaboration on
> implementation.
>
> What I mean by that is instead of collaborating mostly through the
> code and lower level artifacts I'd like to work with others on higher
> level artifacts including requirements (organized by process from an
> end-user organization perspective) and designs based on those
> requirements, and then use those designs to improve OFBiz. The most
> important improvement that should result from this is that we have
> applications that are designed to support various business activities
> and that better meet the needs of various types of end-users. These
> may be improvements to the existing base "applications", and many will
> work best as "specialpurpose" applications that are based on the base
> applications and that more directly address the needs of certain users.
>
> There are some exciting possibilities for this. One of them that seems
> interesting to lots of people right now is to create an application
> that OFBiz itself will use. Once that happens we can make sure it
> works well for other open source projects (both in and out of the ASF)
> and make using it a no-brainer choice that will not only help the
> world of open source in general, but also be perhaps the best form of
> marketing that OFBiz could ask for as an open source project with no
> real marketing budget.
>
> There are many other types of organizations we could target, and what
> I've started working on to help us collaborate on requirements
> acknowledges this. Some of these organization types will share
> business activities and can share requirements, designs, and
> implementations. Others will have some pretty unique requirements. For
> example there are many things that an open source project does that
> service providers also do (such as manage tasks and issues), but also
> many things that each does that the other does not (open source
> projects don't typically invoice for work done, collect against
> receivables, etc).
>
> One other important aspect of this is documentation. A few people have
> written on the mailing lists and to me personally about this recently.
> My opinion is that this collaboration on requirements will be the
> single most important effort to prepare for a successful documentation
> effort. The requirements themselves (and overlap information with OOTB
> apps and links to designs that are implemented) have some value as
> implicit documentation, and more importantly provide a foundation and
> structure that is consistent with what end-users are looking for and
> will help organize a large volume of information. IMO that is one of
> the biggest problems with documentation efforts to date: it is not
> consistently organized, and it is very tough in general to organize it.
>
> Anyway, here is the main page for what I'm calling the "Universal
> Business Process Library":
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Universal+Business+Process+Library+Index
>
> The name is based on the concept of the "Universal Data Model" that we
> got from "The Data Model Resource Book, Revised Edition, Volumes 1 and
> 2" (and the new Volume 3 is pretty interesting too). The trick is that
> there doesn't seem to be such a thing in existence, at least not in a
> form that is useful to OFBiz. There are lots of standards and other
> efforts that have some great seed material for this, like the UBL and
> OAGIS standards which document information flow between organizations
> at many different points during business processes, but have a focus
> on what is external to an organization instead of one that is
> internal, which is much of what OFBiz provides.
>
> For those who want to get involved, there is a quick introduction to
> UBPL here:
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/UBPL+Introduction
>
> To help people get a quick understanding of the artifacts (documents)
> and process I have in mind for doing these requirements, overlap
> analysis, designs, etc I'm working on a shorter version of the "HEMP"
> book that I've slowly been assembling for the last few years (and more
> formally in the last 1.5 years). I'll send out information on that ASAP.
>
> The most mature high level story for a particular type of organization
> is the "Story of Online Retail Company" which you can find here:
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Story+of+Online+Retail+Company
>
> That high level story has links to the more detailed stories, many of
> which can be shared with other types of organizations and so they are
> organized separately under the "General Business Process Stories"
> section of the UBPL Index page.
>
>
> ===============================
>
> Sorry for the long email! I know I've also written something similar
> to this before, and there is a reason I'm writing about it again! I'll
> be presenting about this at OSCON in July, and probably also at
> ApacheCon in November, but there is another reason.
>
> Another benefit to this pattern is that if used for projects that
> involve customization of OFBiz it will significantly increase chances
> of success in terms of overall efficiency and also effective
> applicability to the end-user organization.
>
> Helping others do just that is what I have chosen for the next step of
> my career. To pursue that direction I have recently resigned from
> Hotwax Media and returned to being an Independent Consultant. My hope
> is that by doing this I can work with more of you and do so in a way
> that best meets your needs. For more information see my recent blog
> post on the topic (at http://osofbiz.blogspot.com/) and my new web
> site (at http://www.dejc.com/).
>
> My vision for the future is to solve the biggest problem that OFBiz
> has right now (applicability to end-user organizations) and the
> biggest problem most service providers have (successfully tailoring
> OFBiz to the needs of their clients)... which also happens to be the
> biggest opportunity for service providers too.
>
> I look forward to collaborating a lot more with a lot more of you!
>
> -David
>
>
