I agree,
Something that would be very interesting for OFBiz and would give us more power, David already suggested that, would be to use the
artifact info underneath to provide a tool, like an Eclipse plugin, to navigate in OFBiz, like you do in Java. But yes, it's not the
same scope at the same level, in the past this was called RAD
Jacques
From: "David E Jones" <[email protected]>
The UBPL stories might be helpful for you Chris, but I think they are different
from what you are looking for.
The goal of UBPL is to get people collaborating in a more structured way on gathering requirements, and then based on those
requirements collaborate on designs, and THEN collaborate on implementation of those designs. It is not an attempt to document
what is already in OFBiz, but rather to document common business requirements in the form of processes to help refine and
flesh-out OFBiz (ie to drive the future of OFBiz).
The reason for this goal is that typically there has been little if any collaboration on requirements and designs in OFBiz. This
works to some extent because the OFBiz base applications (those in the components in the ofbiz/applications directory) are meant
to be generic and reusable, and that means organized around a data model and NOT around business processes in order to support a
wider variety of business processes, and so the artifacts are reusable in custom or derived applications that are designed to
support a wide variety of business processes.
In other words, you could try to document the business processes supported by OFBiz, but you would never finish because there is
no single process or even a small set of processes that OFBiz supports... it really a very large set of processes.
Your best bet to find things in OFBiz is to gain an understanding of the data model, and then to use tools like the Artifact Info
stuff in web tools to find related artifacts (ie controller requests and views, screens, forms, service definitions, service
implementations, and so on. When you do this you'll see a number of process snippets that are modeled as services (like creating
an order), or triggers that get other processes going in the form of ECA rules (like creating an invoice for part or all of an
order when items from that order are in a packed shipment).
I'm actually a little bit surprised that no one else has brought up these points. This has been discussed many many times. Or
maybe I've presented it many many times and no one believes me...?
-David
On Jan 25, 2010, at 8:25 AM, Jeroen van der Wal wrote:
Hi Chris,
There is already an initiative do document high-level processes:
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBREQDES/Universal+Business+Process+Library+Index
Jeroen van der Wal
Stromboli b.v.
+31 655 874050
On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Chris Snow <[email protected]>wrote:
Hi Ruth,
I wouldn't even say it's difficult to figure out the existing applications.
It is very time consuming. Without high level overview documentation, the
only way to understand the existing apps is to go through each line of code.
I really think there should be a process documentation effort - of which
I'm willing to give my time...
Cheers,
Chris
Ruth Hoffman wrote:
Hi Chris:
I think you are spot on. Once you understand the basics, it is relatively
easy to develop data driven web applications with the OFBiz framework. I've
been doing just that for several years now. All that "nasty" database stuff
is taken care of - leaving me free to develop real world solutions in short
order.
What is much more difficult is to figure out how to use the existing
applications to solve real world problems. I'm still struggling with that.
Regards,
Ruth
----------------------------------------------------
Find me on the web at http://www.myofbiz.com or Google keyword "myofbiz"
[email protected]
Chris Snow wrote:
Hi Marc,
This is one of the reasons I have been pushing for and independent ofbiz
framework. It's is relatively quick to learn how to develop standalone apps
in ofbiz. I believe with ofbiz, you can develop small applications as
quickly as you can in MS Access - with a lot more benefits when using ofbiz
(multiuser, web enabled, extendable, etc).
However, in my opinion, it takes years of experience to be able to use
the existing apps (partymgmt, ordermgmt, etc).
Cheers,
Chris
Marc Morin wrote:
It's taken us about 6-12 months to get proficient in ofbiz.... mostly
because we mostly "resisted" doing things the ofbiz way....
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adrian Crum" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 7:04:01 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: does anyone know ofbiz?
--- On Fri, 1/22/10, Chris Snow <[email protected]> wrote:
Is it possible for one person to have a deep understanding
of how ALL of the components in ofbiz work? It is
vast. I have found that the only way to tackle the
problem is to break in into chucks: the framework, party
management, work effort... At the rate I'm going I
will have figured it all out in 5 years time.
It took me about 6 months to wrap my head around OFBiz. I have been
using it for 6 years and there are things that I'm still learning about it.
-Adrian
