Cameron Thanks for your insite. As I said, I agree with you completely. Those of us who implement systems for our clients have to use the tools which make us the most productive, and especially so here in the U.S. with programming labor rates so high. My point about maximum usability was for community not personal adoption.
You said, "I do feel that in what you say, there is an implicit, or perhaps subconscious, moral judgement that anything which is not completely free for anyone to use in commercial work, is bad." This was not my thoughts at all. We all have to make a living and I think the ZK folks have found a splendid way to do it. The issue here is not one of free/commercial. It is instead the ability to have the community as a whole adopt a standard that everyone can participate in. I also agree that data consistancy and accuracy is of paramount importance. I guess I just take that for granted in my arguments. On the other hand, if a system is too difficult to use, people won't use it and so it doesn't then matter much how robust your schema is. Which brings me back to user friendly and intuitive UIs. I am about to head down the same path you took in the past and write a semi-complete set of user interfaces that the clerks employed by my clients can use without a lot of training. I know I am not the first, and I bet I am not in the first hundred. Perhaps I'll set up a web site to collect Ofbiz add-ons that are outside the Ofbiz mold and give the next guy a higher starting point. That way, the licensing issues, version compatability, etc., become moot. Skip
