On 05/07/2014 7:15 AM, Pierre Smits wrote:
HI Eric,
First of all, OFBiz has a unique set of functionalities that caters first
to the handling of business transactions. Adding some component
functionality that isn't inline with that is putting the handling of those
business transactions at risk. In the case of forum functionality related
to eCommerce, it could be so that the number of forum postings grows to
such proportions that it might jeopardise the transaction handling.
OTOH, if the forum increases sales to existing customer by 10%, adds 5%
to the sales to new customers, reduces product returns by 30% and
reduces customer support costs by 20% it might be worth the extra costs
of scaling up the OfBiz configuration.
The reduction in transaction related to returns and customer support
might not offset the extra transactions caused by additional sales but
that is unlikely to bring complaints from management.
If the forum activities do not generate addition revenue or customer
satisfaction or reduce costs, you can always turn it off.
It is difficult to make business decisions or propose IT trade-offs for
organizations that you don't know or for general populations of
potential installations of OfBiz.
So, from a business continuity angle having both in/on one system is not
advisable.
Not sure that this conclusion is true in every case or that there are
not available solutions for scaling problems.
You can make the same argument for many features in an ERP. For example,
many companies do not mix eCommerce with accounting in the same system.
Apart from that, leveraging JForum with OFBiz data and vice-versa is
doable. But there are intricacies. You have to take the following into
consideration:
1. You're JForum participants can also register without ever using OFBiz
eCommerce. So you need means to get the user's profile data into OFBiz
2. When using LDAP as the means to do authentication and authorization
in both JForum and OFBiz you need to set both up to use that.
3. For OFBiz, currently there is no integrated functionality available
that updates the LDAP data when user details (userid, first name, last
name, password, etc) are modified in OFBiz. I expect that to be the same
for JForum.
I am not sure that JForum is the only way to go and that is a worthy
discussion.
I would also add the suggestion that social networking tools that
support groups and discussion might be a more modern solution that adds
meets the same business need as forums but add ideas such as
"following", "liking", "rich profiling", etc.
Another way to provide this functionality would be to interface with
LinkedIn and use private and public groups. Facebook might also be a
solution if your business is B2C rather than B2B.
If you want to implement implement functionality in either OFBiz or JForum
to update the LDAP data I suggest you have al look at the Apache Directory
Server project (http://directory.apache.org). Not only does the community
have a (clusterable) Directory server and a good LDAP management solution,
but also api's that you can use for integration.
Regards,
Pierre Smits
*ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
Services & Solutions for Cloud-
Based Manufacturing, Professional
Services and Retail & Trade
http://www.orrtiz.com
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: [email protected]
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
