Hi all,
my name is Markus Küspert and I am a software developer from Germany
that writes mainly J2EE applications. I found the OFBiz project some
months ago on the Internet and really like it.
I also followed your discussion about defining an OFBiz project
strategy. For me one of the main disadvantages of the project is the
lack of using modern standards. OFBiz is a complex software that is to
be used in a complex environment. In my opinion there is no "user" that
downloads the software and starts using it because a "user" knows how to
do its work and not setting up a complex software. I think there always
has to be a software solutions company that wants to use OFBiz for their
customers. But such a company focuses on using standards and well known
design patterns to get things done in a reasonable time (see
http://stackoverflow.com/q/5862995/5223047). And without such companies
there are no users.
The classloader mechanism that was used in previous releases was a bad
example for reinventing the wheel and making things unneccessary
complex. The current "trunk" version of the project is much cleaner,
less complicated and a huge improvement! But there is still a lot of
code that is used to write a framework (e.g. caching, transaction
handling, web service interfaces) that already exists or could be
realised much easier with a (full) J2EE application server. By using
existing standards all developers could focus on the business logic for
the ERP system.
I am interested in contributing code and I think I can write a drop in
replacement for the current delegator that uses the Java Persistence API
(JPA) instead. The reasons for doing this are:
- Mature and standard library that does the cache and entity persistence
handling
- By using JPA entities the code becomes much more typesafe because
there are either named queries that are automatically checked for
correct field names or the criteria API that automatically generates a
metamodel that can be used for queries. Existing modules can still use
the current query style (and can be rewritten step by step) but new
modules can use the power and type safety of JPA named queries or the
criteria API.
- Creating RESTful webservice without writing code (see
https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1212/toplink/TLADG/restful_jpa.htm)
- Another step to move the project to a modern J2EE application.
Are you interested?
Greetings
Markus Küspert
