Vadim,
About your formatting: this mailing list filters out all HTML because HTML
email messages tend to be VERY large and the Apache Software Foundation in
general has many thousands of messages going through mailing lists every day.
Back to your original question: when asking questions here please keep in mind
that responses you get are volunteer responses and the only qualification you
can be sure of for those responding is that they are capable of subscribing to
the mailing list. If many people respond with something consistent then it is a
safer bet that you can rely on the information, but usually not otherwise. With
a question as long and involved as yours chances are you'll only get a small
number of responses, and chances are your experience will be VERY different
from those few who do respond.
OFBiz is a large project. A good developer can learn to work effectively with
the framework with a couple of weeks of training and a couple of months of
hands-on development. However, even a good developer will have a hard time
picking up all of the data structures and business logic even after many months
of study, and realistically since most people don't or can't do that, it
usually takes years of work experience and even then they'll only have
knowledge of the parts of the system that have had the opportunity to work with.
Understanding the business side is much easier for someone who has a good
business background, and by good business background I mean really good
experience with how businesses actually operate and what sorts of information
businesses actually keep track of when operating. Sometimes people coming out
of university business programs will have this, but most of the time they do
not. Most people with business degrees will have learned more about laws and
how to manipulate people than about the myriad of complexities of managing a
warehouse, handling purchasing, or tracking information about products to
facility the many touch points with those products throughout the company, and
making it easy for customers to find products they want, or how to figure out
where customer interest intersects with stuff you want to move.
So anyway, keep in mind that your diving into a pretty comprehensive ERP
system, but one that is made up of what people have seen fit to contribute for
free. An extremely wide variety of data structures and common business
processes are represented in the system, though many are not complete, or at
least not complete in the way your client will want to use them.
The only way to really be sure is to document ALL business activities (usually
easiest if organized by process and not by role or by system function), and
then do an overlap/gap analysis to see how each business activity would be done
in the system, or if there is not something to do it (or it is not adequate for
what your users want) then detail what the system needs to do to help manage
that activity. Once you've done that, then you'll know what the system can do
for you as-is, and what needs to be done to expand and change the system to do
what your client needs. Short of that, everything is a guess and guaranteed to
be wrong (the only question is by how much and in which direction(s)...).
To help with that I recommend this material (this is what I use with clients):
http://www.dejc.com/home/HEMP.html
I'd also recommend looking at some of the generic business process stories that
have come from OFBiz-based projects and been refined somewhat over the years
(though keep in mind that these stories in some places represent activities
that are not managed by OOTB OFBiz, ie these need an overlap/gap analysis
document to make them more meaningful):
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBREQDES/Universal+Business+Process+Library+Index
Best of luck,
-David
On Sep 3, 2010, at 11:32 AM, Vadim Eisenberg wrote:
Hello BJ and other OfBiz developers,
I was not subscribed to the mailing list so I did not receive the answer
of BJ to my previous message -
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/ofbiz-user/201009.mbox/%[email protected]%3e
. Because of that I cannot post a response to it. Secondly, I used a wrong
MIME in my previous message, so all the bullets and formatting were
missing. I am reposting the original message below in the right format
(any additional comments/opinions are welcome). In addition, my response
to BJ follows. Sorry for the mess I created.
Hi BJ,
Thank you for your prompt response. I think I've got the general idea. I
still would like to ask a question about learning OfBiz:
The three volumes of the data model book comprise about 1700 pages
together. Should I use the book as a reference or do I have to read all
the three volumes before starting my work on OfBiz ? Which parts of the
book are required before I begin my work ?
Thanks& Regards,
Vadim
My original message:
===========================================================================================================
Hello OfBiz developers,
My name is Vadim Eisenberg and I work at IBM Research - Haifa, on the
UniversAAL project - http://universaal.org/. It is a consortium European
project. Its goal is to create a platform for applications, services and
devices for Ambient Assisted Living, that is a kind of "Smart Home" for
senior citizens. As part of the platform, we - several software developers
- have to develop an e-commerce site - uStore
http://universaal.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=9&Itemid=21
. This site would be a one-stop-shop for software, services and devices
for Ambient Assisted Living.
We consider using OfBiz for implementation of uStore.
I would like to ask you several questions about the features we want to
implement. I would be glad to hear any information you can tell me about
how hard could it be for us to implement these features. Please note that
we have no prior experience with OfBiz.
Any your thoughts, intuition, experience, advice about OfBiz/business
programming are welcome.
In particular, the following information would help us very much :
How much work should be done by us in order to implement all the features
that follow (Person/Months, Person/Years, for skilled OfBiz
developers/general software engineers). Which part would be to use
existing "extension" mechanisms of OfBiz and which part would be actually
changing the OfBiz code ? Here your intuition/experience from related
projects is welcome, we do not need exact numbers, just a ballpark.
How much time the general software developers have to learn about OfBiz
and how skilled in OfBiz they should become in order to implement these
features
E-commerce website features:
Using e-commerce site for selling software (such as AppStore of iPhone)
and downloadable files in general (video, presentations of courses etc.).
Here the issue is to manage links where the bought files could be
downloaded. The idea is to prevent a situation in which buyers would buy a
software application, receive a link to it for downloading and share the
link afterwards with anybody they want, so anybody would be able to
download the application without paying for it.
Using e-commerce site for selling services (human services and others)
Extending e-commerce site with general widgets, such as calendar, clock,
map, a widget for downloading files, etc., and integrating the widgets
with the OfBiz
Integration with other websites/services:
Integrating an e-commerce website with another (non-OfBiz backed) site -
adding possibility for sellers to add products to the e-commerce site via
the other site, to see customer feedback provided on the e-commerce site
via the other site
Integrating an e-commerce website with another (possibly non-OfBiz)
e-commerce website, such as eBay/Amazon. What are the current
possibilities of integration with eBay ?
Integrating an e-commerce website with post/delivery services/sites
Adding advanced features:
Adding support for signing business contracts between service consumers
and service providers, between providers of different services etc. via
the e-commerce site
Adding support for applying capability/requirement model, such as
JSR-124, (for example for matching between customer's requirements and
capabilities of software, devices and services). The customer or software
agent on behalf of the customer could provide his requirements as part of
his account information, and the e-commerce solution would match between
the products (according to their capabilities) and the requirements of the
customers.
Has OfBiz a recommendation engine (providing recommendations to a user
based on his activity - searches, purchases, reviews etc.) ? If no, how
hard would it be to add it ?
Can the OfBiz-based e-commerce web site be presented by browsers of smart
phones ? How hard would it be to enable it ?
Changing search/recommendations of OfBiz to be based on the requirements
of the customer
Changing search/recommendations of OfBiz to be based on the geolocation of
the customer
Adding support for customization of products/services and changes in the
prices according to the customization during the purchase process
Adding support for a composition solution of hardware, software and human
services (bundles, kits). A seller could compose a new product by
combining several existing products
Adding support for manual approval of products by site administrators
before submission of the products to the e-commerce site
Adding support for managing versions of the software applications that are
sold on the e-commerce website
Sorry for so many questions and sorry if some of them are out of context.
Best Regards,
Vadim
-------------------------------
Vadim Eisenberg
IT for Healthcare& Life Sciences
IBM Research - Haifa
