Hi David,
One thing could be useful in the long run is moving to OSGi based
components. There are numerous benefits of OSGi and you can find a a lot
about it on the net. The kind of modularity OSGi brings is not possible
in other components modules. Dynamic bundle loading and unloading is
useful during development and run time. During development, for example
if you have changed some Java code in one of the bundle, you do not need
to restart the complete server to load the new code. Just update or
stop/start the bundle and you are ready to test. One more advantage I
see is exporting OFBiz services as web services or distributed OSGi
services. Eclipse ECF and Apache CXF provide distributed OSGi
implementation. Integration with other applications such as ServiceMix
should also be very easier as they are already run on OSGi platform.
Thanks,
Raj
I recently completed a prototype to run the OFBiz framework embedded in
the Equinox OSGi runtime and it worked fine with little changes here and
there.
David E Jones wrote:
If you could change anything about the OFBiz framework (not related to a
specific tier), what would it be? This could be about how OFBiz is deployed,
how the tools fit together, how application components are written and
organized, and so on.
All comments are welcome. If there is another tool you'd like to see used, please describe what you
like about it (like "I've found the aspect oriented inversion of control approach nice because
I can plugin all sorts of tools and the full life cycle of the tools are managed for me")
instead of just mentioning the tool (like "let's use Spring!").
Why am I asking? This topic comes up every once in a while, and it's true that
many suggestions never get enough support to actually happen (or on further
research it is decided that the idea is not tenable), but brainstorming about
them to get ideas in the open is still a great thing. The history of OFBiz is
full of things like this where users and more casual contributors had ideas and
saw possibilities that others, even more involved contributors, totally missed
or never looked at that way. What I think would be fun, and ultimately useful
too, is to keep this mostly to brainstorming and not do too much comparing of
ideas.
BTW, if you want to brainstorm about one of the tiers (ie the Data, Logic, or
UI tiers) please use the other threads on those.
-David
