On Mar 31, 2009, at 2:05 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Hi colleagues,
I am writing to the list to request information concerning OFBiz. I am
doing a eCommerce Software comparative between the main commercial and
open source products.
I have achieved to find information about client segmentation (use of
groups), campaign managment (through Marketing Manager and
promotions),
stocks management (Facility Manager), product catalog (Product
Manager),
order management (using Order Manager application), content management
(through Content Manager)...
However, there are other features I have not been able to document. I
would be very grateful if you could send me details about the
following
features:
- Reports & analytics capabilities
OFBiz currently has a few dozens pre-written reports OOTB, and more
can be added using the OFBiz tools, or an external reporting tool
(which is still very common, ie companies that use something like
Crystal Reports or Business Objects will use that with their OFBiz
applications). OFBiz has tools in the framework to facilitate building
of user interfaces, and these same tools are used for building
reports. This provides a high level of efficiency, and allows
developers to use the same tools they are used to... and in some cases
scripts and other things can even be reused in reports.
OFBiz also includes some BI infrastructure to support defining and
populating star schemas, which can then be used for ad-hoc or pre-
written reports. A limited star schema exists, and work is going on to
extend it.
- Integration and Interoperability (SOA Architecture, Web Services
offered)
The OFBiz logic layer is itself a Service-Oriented tool, and all
primary logic in OFBiz is implemented as services. Many of these
services can be exposed externally as web services automatically, and
the more complex ones can be exposed as web services (or call web
services) through web services code that maps to them.
- Usability (for final customers, and administrators)
Usability is very subjective, but I'll try to answer in a helpful way.
OFBiz is often customized for larger organizations, and in those cases
the best usability is achieved by analyzing processes and then
building user interfaces to directly support those processes. This
results in something specific to end-user requirements and is far
better than any OOTB user interface that even the best designers could
create without specific requirements.
That is the main design goal behind OFBiz: easy customization since
the only way to get a really good UI is to do so based on very
specific requirements... and those requirements tend to change
dramatically between organizations, in many cases even organizations
in the same industry.
The OOTB user interfaces are primarily meant for easy reuse in custom
user interfaces, so they mostly avoid automating any specific process
and are instead meant to fit into any process desired. However, using
the OOTB interfaces is pretty common and is usually best done by
documenting where and how to do common tasks according to the
processes of the organization. In other words, instead of creating a
custom UI when you are on a tighter budget you can simply document how
to use the OOTB interfaces, and while not usually excellent this way
it is quite adequate for smaller organizations and gives them more
functionality and ability to automate things than they would have in
most software, allowing them to avoid large numbers of spreadsheets
and such. Overall this results in tools to keep track and automate
organizational information that are far more efficient and usable that
a hodge-podge of various systems.
- Personalization potential
Personalization is an extremely general term, broadly meaning behavior
or data that changes according to the user. There are hundreds of
features in OFBiz ecommerce and the OFBiz back-end (manager) apps that
would fit this description.
Please feel free to send over more details and I (or others) will be
happy to comment on them.
- Multidevice sites available?
It is pretty easy to build sites targeted at different devices, and
there are some available OOTB. If by "device" you mean a specific UI
then the hhfacility component is a good example. If by "device" you
mean specific hardware control (like cash drawers and CC scanners),
then the pos component (point-of-sale) has some good stuff.
- Accessibility considered?
In ecommerce the templates are often changed so much that
accessibility ends up more in the hands of the designers and
developers who customize the system (so make sure you have a good
service provider!). The OOTB ecommerce templates do a pretty good job
of this by using styled text instead of images, alt-text on images,
and so on.
For the OOTB back-end functionality, accessibility is considered, and
to be maintained it must be considered in customizations. These are
primarily web-based applications and to improve accessibility are very
text-heavy, etc.
Thank you for your help in advance.
No problem, best wishes in finding a solution that meets your needs.
-David
