David,
this sounds like a good idea.
However, the new "special purpose" components should still be focused on
a business/functional area instead of a specific platform.
For example, the upcoming "hand held" component should be a new
application, with a simplified ui suitable for hand held devices, to
manage warehouse tasks; if we will need an hand held ui for, let's say,
workeffort tasks, this will go into a different component: we should
avoid to create a new component based ona specific platform, e.g. hend
held version of OFBiz in one big component.
Should we consider the POS a good candidate for this new group?
And last but not least, I think that these extensions should be
considered 'official' OFBiz components, and the decisions about them
will be taken in the same way they are taken from the components in the
application folder (not like the ones in the specialized folder).
Jacopo
David E Jones wrote:
Just a quick note on something related to some conversations I've had
recently (including one at the users conference), and this Jira issue:
http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-226
There seems to be some interest in creating more special purpose
applications that are meant to be used generally by a person in a
specific role, or that are meant to work along with the "core"
applications but make things easier for certain activities or processes.
We might eventually have lots of these (including this one), so it might
be good to have a separate top level folder for these so that they don't
have to do in the "applications" folder.
In a way this would be like the old "specialized" folder, but with a
couple of distinctions. These components should be:
- limited in scope to a certain role or activity in an organization
- be mostly based on existing artifacts (forms, services, entities, etc)
in the components in the applications directory
- should have enough interest from multiple parties that they will
likely be maintained over time
- should not become personal crusades that are almost a fork of OFBiz
itself (ie functionality should always go in the applications directory
components and be re-used and special purposed in these add-on components)
Some examples that people have talked about or that exist elsewhere
would be applications for:
- Asset Maintenance (special UI pulling from Facility, Product,
Accounting, Order, etc)
- Sales Force Automation (special UI pulling from Party, Marketing,
Product, Order, etc)
Does anyone have any thoughts on this or what we might call it? In
general these are aggregations of screens from the "core applications",
plus special screens to tie things together and enable specific
processes or activities.
-David
