Dev - File attachment framework

[Łukasz Nowak]

Hi Guys,

We've been looking last few month for ERP solution for our company. Our
main bussiness is design and manufacture of advanced electronic
products. After testing Compiere, Tiny ERP, ERP5 and OfBiz,
we decided to go for your project, which we found the colsest to what we
really need, easy configurable and expandable.

We would like to further extend ofbiz functionality. One of the first
things we would like to add is sort of file attachement system (pdf, oo
documents, images, etc.) which could be added to any object in OfBiz
system (product, party, catalog, etc). There are may situations where
this canbe useful - e.g. technical files for components, image of a
piece broken by customer for service invoice, etc.
In our opinion each attachement should have following attributes:
  - unique id of added file
  - file type (MIME: pdf, octet/stream)
  - file type (human: Description data, Client data, Internal documentation)
  - basic version control based on OfBiz historical data management
  - eventually - ability to index files, which contains text
  - many-to-many relation file-OfBiz's object
  - ability to attach files to catalogs in e-commerce
  - ability to be connected with external document systems

We would like to find the best solution (which, if you find it useful,
we would be glad to contribute
as official ofBiz framework), therefore I would like to ask you few
questions:

  - should we extent abilities of framework/images (which do not have
much documentation) or add new
module eg. framework/files to OfBiz?
  - where the files should be kept? on file-system or as BLOBs in DB?
Many DB systems do not have efficient support
for BLOBs, and OfBiz should be not DB system depended....
  - if the files will be kept on file-system how we should index them and
relate them in DB? Do you have any suggestions, or shall we provide our
own solution?

We will work using
http://ofbizwiki.go-integral.com/Wiki.jsp?page=AlternateSVNTips, so
there wouldn't be any problems while applying our work to your system.

Best Regards,
Łukasz Nowak

--
Łukasz Nowak R&D Ventis http://www.ventis.com.pl/
tel: [phone] wew 37 fax: [phone]
 
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[byersa]

Lukasz,

OFBiz has content management utitities that already do much of what you
need. It needs work, but would definitely be the place to start. The
best examples of the use of the CMS would be in the ecommerce front page
and the specialized/community webapp. The CMS foundation consists of
three entities, Content, DataResource and ContentAssoc and a lot of
supporting entities. I do not think that you should think so
specifically in terms of a file system. The CMS can store content in
file systems or databases. It is being expanded to embrace other OFBiz
objects, such as Surveys. Recently, there was work done to take
advantage of the capability of OpenOffice to translate documents and
show the difference between document versions. Also, there is a revision
and an approval framework for content. In addition, there is a strong
role and operation type based permission system built for the CMS.

 See my comments below.

Łukasz Nowak wrote:

>Hi Guys,
>
>We've been looking last few month for ERP solution for our company. Our
>main bussiness is design and manufacture of advanced electronic
>products. After testing Compiere, Tiny ERP, ERP5 and OfBiz,
>we decided to go for your project, which we found the colsest to what we
>really need, easy configurable and expandable.
>
>We would like to further extend ofbiz functionality. One of the first
>things we would like to add is sort of file attachement system (pdf, oo
>documents, images, etc.) which could be added to any object in OfBiz
>system (product, party, catalog, etc). There are may situations where
>this canbe useful - e.g. technical files for components, image of a
>piece broken by customer for service invoice, etc.
>  
>

This capability to attach content to entities is there in many places.
There is infrastructure to attach content to Product and
CommunicationEvent. Another entity targeted for content association is
the WorkEffort.

>In our opinion each attachement should have following attributes:
>  - unique id of added file
>  
>
Content.contentId

>  - file type (MIME: pdf, octet/stream)
>  
>
Content.mimeTypeId is used as a "display" mime type.
DataResource.mimeTypeId tracks the actual mime type of the document as
it is stored.

>  - file type (human: Description data, Client data, Internal documentation)
>  
>
Content.contentTypeId. Also look at ContentPurpose.

>  - basic version control based on OfBiz historical data management
>  
>
See ContentRevision and ContentRevisionItem

>  - eventually - ability to index files, which contains text
>  
>
There is functionality for using Lucene to index content.

>  - many-to-many relation file-OfBiz's object
>  
>
Not sure what this means exactly, but it should not be too hard to do
using the ContentAssoc entity which is a many-to-many graph.

>  - ability to attach files to catalogs in e-commerce
>  
>
There is the ProductContent relationship.

>  - ability to be connected with external document systems
>
>We would like to find the best solution (which, if you find it useful,
>we would be glad to contribute
>as official ofBiz framework), therefore I would like to ask you few
>questions:
>
>  - should we extent abilities of framework/images (which do not have
>much documentation) or add new
>module eg. framework/files to OfBiz?
>  
>

Better to fix the current CMS than to have two systems.

>  - where the files should be kept? on file-system or as BLOBs in DB?
>Many DB systems do not have efficient support
>for BLOBs, and OfBiz should be not DB system depended....
>  
>
The DataResource.dataResourceTypeId determines where the document is
stored - database or filesystem.

>  - if the files will be kept on file-system how we should index them and
>relate them in DB? Do you have any suggestions, or shall we provide our
>own solution?
>  
>
The CMS can act as a filesystem index as it is now. It would be nice to
have some tools to organize the target file system directories.

>We will work using
>http://ofbizwiki.go-integral.com/Wiki.jsp?page=AlternateSVNTips, so
>there wouldn't be any problems while applying our work to your system.
>
>Best Regards,
>Łukasz Nowak
>
>  
>
I wrote most of the CMS, using David Jone's design, so I would be your
best resource for answering questions. I do not have time to work with
it these days, but I will work with you to get things committed. I am
certain that if you want, you can eventually "own" the CMS. A stronger
CMS would be a great addition to OFBiz. It would be good to have your help.
 
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[Łukasz Nowak]

Hello Al,

Thank you very much for your response. We will investigate content
module and report our ideas.

Well, anyway we won't reinvent the wheel :)

Best Regards,
Luke Nowak

--
Łukasz Nowak R&D Ventis http://www.ventis.com.pl/
tel: [phone] wew 37 fax: [phone]
 
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