OFBiz Performance, a good story

[Nick Rosser-2]

All,

I thought I'd share some encouraging news from a recent implementation
we were involved in:

  * we built a site for a Philly based jeweler who has some unique
    products geared for Valentine's Day
  * they start their sale on 1-Jan, it typically gains real momentum by
    the end of Jan, and peaks around the 11th, 12th Feb
  * peak #visitors (day): 20,000
  * peak #pageviews (day): 150,000
  * peak #orders (day): ~4000
  * peak #concurrent users: 275

And perhaps the most impressive fact around performance was that during
peak the site was flying, no noticeable difference if there was a single
user or 275 concurrent users.

My conclusion is that the OFBiz caching model works really well when
configured correctly (together with good memory allocation and
settings). We also spent a great deal of time tuning our BigFish
solution, specifically around the usage of the entity model layer
(really just making sure we always use cache calls). We logged all SQL
calls, and then analyzed the code to remove a second execution of any
SQL call (since it should be cached). The Grinder was used to monitor
and gauge performance improvements. All in all very encouraging and
gives great confidence of marketing this solution into the largest
organizations.

I would personally like to thank the key committers who built the
caching functionality -- it's a little tricky to understand, use and
configure but once that is overcome it works impressively.

We have been involved in some IBM Websphere Commerce implementations and
I'm really beginning to wonder why the software and implementations are
10-20 times more expensive. With OFBiz we have an enterprise solution,
with affordability for a small business.

I'd be interested in any stories in the community around performance and
high levels of order taking --- these case studies can really increase
adoption of OFBiz. Stability and scalability are often at the top of
anyone's list when looking at a new platform. Any stories out there?

Check out the site: www.ihatestevensinger.com. It's built using our
BigFish solution. More at http://bigfish.solveda.com.

Nick

[Adrian Crum-3]

That's great news Nick! Performance will improve more when you switch to
R13. There have been a lot of performance improvements since R10.

Adrian Crum
Sandglass Software
www.sandglass-software.com

On 2/13/2014 4:06 AM, Nick Rosser wrote:

> All,
>
> I thought I'd share some encouraging news from a recent implementation
> we were involved in:
>
>   * we built a site for a Philly based jeweler who has some unique
>     products geared for Valentine's Day
>   * they start their sale on 1-Jan, it typically gains real momentum by
>     the end of Jan, and peaks around the 11th, 12th Feb
>   * peak #visitors (day): 20,000
>   * peak #pageviews (day): 150,000
>   * peak #orders (day): ~4000
>   * peak #concurrent users: 275
>
> And perhaps the most impressive fact around performance was that during
> peak the site was flying, no noticeable difference if there was a single
> user or 275 concurrent users.
>
> My conclusion is that the OFBiz caching model works really well when
> configured correctly (together with good memory allocation and
> settings). We also spent a great deal of time tuning our BigFish
> solution, specifically around the usage of the entity model layer
> (really just making sure we always use cache calls). We logged all SQL
> calls, and then analyzed the code to remove a second execution of any
> SQL call (since it should be cached). The Grinder was used to monitor
> and gauge performance improvements. All in all very encouraging and
> gives great confidence of marketing this solution into the largest
> organizations.
>
> I would personally like to thank the key committers who built the
> caching functionality -- it's a little tricky to understand, use and
> configure but once that is overcome it works impressively.
>
> We have been involved in some IBM Websphere Commerce implementations and
> I'm really beginning to wonder why the software and implementations are
> 10-20 times more expensive. With OFBiz we have an enterprise solution,
> with affordability for a small business.
>
> I'd be interested in any stories in the community around performance and
> high levels of order taking --- these case studies can really increase
> adoption of OFBiz. Stability and scalability are often at the top of
> anyone's list when looking at a new platform. Any stories out there?
>
> Check out the site: www.ihatestevensinger.com. It's built using our
> BigFish solution. More at http://bigfish.solveda.com.
>
> Nick
>
>

[Ted Byers]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Nick Rosser <[hidden email]> wrote:

> All,
>
> I thought I'd share some encouraging news from a recent implementation we
> were involved in:
>
>  * we built a site for a Philly based jeweler who has some unique
>    products geared for Valentine's Day
>  * they start their sale on 1-Jan, it typically gains real momentum by
>    the end of Jan, and peaks around the 11th, 12th Feb
>  * peak #visitors (day): 20,000
>  * peak #pageviews (day): 150,000
>  * peak #orders (day): ~4000
>  * peak #concurrent users: 275
>
> And perhaps the most impressive fact around performance was that during
> peak the site was flying, no noticeable difference if there was a single
> user or 275 concurrent users.
>

This looks good.  It wouldn't be so good if you had to deploy on the latest
super-computer to get that performance, but it would be astounding if you
could get that off a five year old desktop that would otherwise be a really
ugly paper-weight.  ;-)

I agree with you that it would be good to collect reports like yours
regarding good performance.  Might I suggest setting something up either on
the OFBiz site, or on yours, to make such reports easy to find.  I would
also suggest that the technical details of the host be provided (whether
that is on Amazon's service, or one of the many other hosting services),
documenting at least the amount of RAM, number of cores/processors, and
hard disk space.  And with the processors, some indication of the speed of
the processor (after all, my current workstation, with 8 cores, is more
than an order of magnitude faster than my old HP that had a 4 core AMD -
not all cores were created equal).  And how many (virtual) machines were
used: 2, 3, more?  And if more than one, how is each used?

It is great that this is affordable for small business, but a good
businessman is going to want information that lets him assess the cost of
getting it done (both initial setup and continuing monthly costs), along
with the performance, and whether or not the interface is user friendly.
How can a businessman hope to do a cost-benefit analysis without such
information, especially if he or she knows little about IT save that it is
needed and must rely on outside consultants?

I would suggest that, in addition to providing information suitable for
other developers interested in contributing code, and more for users, it is
necessary for some documentation, along with reports of performance like
yours, written to deal with the concerns of a businessman from the
perspective of businessmen.  Only then will OFBiz really thrive, if I may
use that metaphor.

Cheers

Ted

[Todd Thorner]

Thank you, Mr. Byers, for posting such a remark-worthy suggestion, and
thank you, Mr. Rosser, for providing the inertia that might help start
an exciting new OFBiz-related project (congrats as well on securing a
happy jeweler client).

I would be an enthusiastic participant in any documentation project
whose outcome helped business managers become dedicated OFBiz end users.
 Indeed, I am one such hopeful business manager, excited by the prospect
of having OFBiz at the core of my transactional processes, daunted by
the IT learning curve.

I am by trade a tech writer with over 15 years of experience, mostly
doing API docs for SDK products.  I also have a Fine Arts degree in
Creative Writing, and those two properties combined make me one of the
most sought-after writers in the Vancouver IT industry.  I am, though,
as I said, now working on becoming a successful business owner.

From my perspective, this might be a proverbial golden opportunity.  I
would learn a lot and move up that learning curve, plus I have much to
offer those who seek to improve OFBiz documentation and attract more
CFOs & CMOs to the product.

I ask the community how a prospective team might start a workflow (Agile
or whatever) for such a project.  Would a focal point of managing
productivity be JIRA or something like that?  Is there an
eat-the-dog-food instance of OFBiz out there allowing authorized
contributors to use its Scrum functionality?  Maybe even its CMS
interface?  I would love to help make OFBiz compatible with any
arbitrary CMIS-compliant product, but that's just me...

Thanks for everything that everyone does to make this product world-class.



On 14-02-13 07:26 AM, Ted Byers wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Nick Rosser <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I thought I'd share some encouraging news from a recent implementation we
>> were involved in:
>>
>>  * we built a site for a Philly based jeweler who has some unique
>>    products geared for Valentine's Day
>>  * they start their sale on 1-Jan, it typically gains real momentum by
>>    the end of Jan, and peaks around the 11th, 12th Feb
>>  * peak #visitors (day): 20,000
>>  * peak #pageviews (day): 150,000
>>  * peak #orders (day): ~4000
>>  * peak #concurrent users: 275
>>
>> And perhaps the most impressive fact around performance was that during
>> peak the site was flying, no noticeable difference if there was a single
>> user or 275 concurrent users.
>>
>
> This looks good.  It wouldn't be so good if you had to deploy on the latest
> super-computer to get that performance, but it would be astounding if you
> could get that off a five year old desktop that would otherwise be a really
> ugly paper-weight.  ;-)
>
> I agree with you that it would be good to collect reports like yours
> regarding good performance.  Might I suggest setting something up either on
> the OFBiz site, or on yours, to make such reports easy to find.  I would
> also suggest that the technical details of the host be provided (whether
> that is on Amazon's service, or one of the many other hosting services),
> documenting at least the amount of RAM, number of cores/processors, and
> hard disk space.  And with the processors, some indication of the speed of
> the processor (after all, my current workstation, with 8 cores, is more
> than an order of magnitude faster than my old HP that had a 4 core AMD -
> not all cores were created equal).  And how many (virtual) machines were
> used: 2, 3, more?  And if more than one, how is each used?
>
> It is great that this is affordable for small business, but a good
> businessman is going to want information that lets him assess the cost of
> getting it done (both initial setup and continuing monthly costs), along
> with the performance, and whether or not the interface is user friendly.
> How can a businessman hope to do a cost-benefit analysis without such
> information, especially if he or she knows little about IT save that it is
> needed and must rely on outside consultants?
>
> I would suggest that, in addition to providing information suitable for
> other developers interested in contributing code, and more for users, it is
> necessary for some documentation, along with reports of performance like
> yours, written to deal with the concerns of a businessman from the
> perspective of businessmen.  Only then will OFBiz really thrive, if I may
> use that metaphor.
>
> Cheers
>
> Ted
>

[Ted Byers]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Todd Thorner <[hidden email]>wrote:

> Thank you, Mr. Byers, for posting such a remark-worthy suggestion, and
> thank you, Mr. Rosser, for providing the inertia that might help start
> an exciting new OFBiz-related project (congrats as well on securing a
> happy jeweler client).
>
> I would be an enthusiastic participant in any documentation project
> whose outcome helped business managers become dedicated OFBiz end users.
>  Indeed, I am one such hopeful business manager, excited by the prospect
> of having OFBiz at the core of my transactional processes, daunted by
> the IT learning curve.
>
> I am by trade a tech writer with over 15 years of experience, mostly
> doing API docs for SDK products.  I also have a Fine Arts degree in
> Creative Writing, and those two properties combined make me one of the
> most sought-after writers in the Vancouver IT industry.  I am, though,
> as I said, now working on becoming a successful business owner.
>
> From my perspective, this might be a proverbial golden opportunity.  I
> would learn a lot and move up that learning curve, plus I have much to
> offer those who seek to improve OFBiz documentation and attract more
> CFOs & CMOs to the product.
>
> I ask the community how a prospective team might start a workflow (Agile
> or whatever) for such a project.  Would a focal point of managing
> productivity be JIRA or something like that?  Is there an
> eat-the-dog-food instance of OFBiz out there allowing authorized
> contributors to use its Scrum functionality?  Maybe even its CMS
> interface?  I would love to help make OFBiz compatible with any
> arbitrary CMIS-compliant product, but that's just me...
>
> Thanks for everything that everyone does to make this product world-class.
>
>

You're welcome Todd,

I don't have a specific answer for the questions you raise.  I generally go
with whatever works with the team with whom I am working at the time.

My priority, right now, is to first learn how to set up a multi-tenant
installation of OFBiz, as well as a multi-site installation of wordpress;
and then how to integrate the two so that OFBiz's ecommerce component can
be used to handle payment for subscriptions to the contents on one or more
of the sites in the Wordpress installation.  I'd also want to be able to
support use of, the relevant back office components (e.g. the accounting),
for a venture that is focused on publishing.

I then want to install Redmine, in order to be able to exploit it's project
management features (including issue/bug tracking).  I have not yet begun
to see to what extent Redmine's capabilities are complementary to OFBiz's
capabilities or how much overlap there may be, e.g., WRT the work effort
components).  While Redmine, itself, integrates into a couple version
control products (notably Subversion), it does not seem to have, as far as
I can tell, support for any of the UML diagrams.  What I am keeping an eye
out for is an open source product that both relates each UML diagram (such
as a use case scenario) to one or more items on a wish list (easily created
in Redmine), as well as relating each use case diagram to the code that
implements it.  Do you, or anyone else, know of an open source product that
supports UML documentation, that could be integrated with Redmine?  One
that can construct a suite of UML documents given a codebase (and that can
be used to construct a complete set of UML diagrams, or at least use case
and E-R diagrams, for OFBiz, WordPress and Redmine), would be particularly
useful as that could automatically provide core design documentation, and
the use case documents could be used both to provide feature lists and a
suite of howto documents.  Is there any automated tool to make the
documentation task easier?

One of the things that makes this especially daunting is that OFBiz is Java
while Wordpress is PHP and Redmine is Ruby.  And there are a few features
that do not seem to exist that I would probably implement in a mix of Perl
and C++.  Integration of web apps involving such a mix of languages is
something I have not yet tried (all the web apps I have developed have been
either entirely Perl (with JavaScript on the client side) or a mix of Java
Servlets+JSP/JSF, so I am unsure of how to integrate two apps that use very
different technologies, and especially how to maintain session info in that
effort.

Cheers,

Ted

[Todd Thorner]

Hi Ted,

I'm still in full-doofus mode regarding OFBiz and its capabilities for
integrating with third-party services/apps from various
frameworks/languages.  I'm not even strong enough on the uptake to know
whether something like the ASF's Camel project might be stepping in the
right direction.

I haven't thought much about UML diagramming tools since I used the old
Rational Rose product while doing some Struts 1.x web app programming
(over 10 years ago).  I'm afraid that when it comes to
design/development/implementation this tech writer is always playing
catch-up with the professionals.  Documentation is my strength.

That said, diagramming some use cases in UML would be an important
consideration for coming up with answers to various questions that
C-levels might have while conducting OFBiz cost-benefit analyses.  I
know that Ruth Hoffman wrote a great introductory book about high-level
OFBiz ecommerce functionality, a solid jumping-off point for business
managers who are as IT-non-savvy as I am.

I am among the demographic of end users for such hand-holding
documentation.  How can another OFBIz-related project help potential end
users take that next step from Hoffman's introductory book toward
practical milestones?

Perhaps gathering requirements would be a reasonable place to start.  I
will evaluate options for hosting such a collaborative documentation
project (question for OFBiz site admins: is there a sandbox area in the
wiki that is available?)

I sense a tiny bit of traction.  Here's hoping it gets beyond just a few
people talking around one another.





On 14-02-13 10:12 AM, Ted Byers wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Todd Thorner <[hidden email]>wrote:
>
>> Thank you, Mr. Byers, for posting such a remark-worthy suggestion, and
>> thank you, Mr. Rosser, for providing the inertia that might help start
>> an exciting new OFBiz-related project (congrats as well on securing a
>> happy jeweler client).
>>
>> I would be an enthusiastic participant in any documentation project
>> whose outcome helped business managers become dedicated OFBiz end users.
>>  Indeed, I am one such hopeful business manager, excited by the prospect
>> of having OFBiz at the core of my transactional processes, daunted by
>> the IT learning curve.
>>
>> I am by trade a tech writer with over 15 years of experience, mostly
>> doing API docs for SDK products.  I also have a Fine Arts degree in
>> Creative Writing, and those two properties combined make me one of the
>> most sought-after writers in the Vancouver IT industry.  I am, though,
>> as I said, now working on becoming a successful business owner.
>>
>> From my perspective, this might be a proverbial golden opportunity.  I
>> would learn a lot and move up that learning curve, plus I have much to
>> offer those who seek to improve OFBiz documentation and attract more
>> CFOs & CMOs to the product.
>>
>> I ask the community how a prospective team might start a workflow (Agile
>> or whatever) for such a project.  Would a focal point of managing
>> productivity be JIRA or something like that?  Is there an
>> eat-the-dog-food instance of OFBiz out there allowing authorized
>> contributors to use its Scrum functionality?  Maybe even its CMS
>> interface?  I would love to help make OFBiz compatible with any
>> arbitrary CMIS-compliant product, but that's just me...
>>
>> Thanks for everything that everyone does to make this product world-class.
>>
>>
> You're welcome Todd,
>
> I don't have a specific answer for the questions you raise.  I generally go
> with whatever works with the team with whom I am working at the time.
>
> My priority, right now, is to first learn how to set up a multi-tenant
> installation of OFBiz, as well as a multi-site installation of wordpress;
> and then how to integrate the two so that OFBiz's ecommerce component can
> be used to handle payment for subscriptions to the contents on one or more
> of the sites in the Wordpress installation.  I'd also want to be able to
> support use of, the relevant back office components (e.g. the accounting),
> for a venture that is focused on publishing.
>
> I then want to install Redmine, in order to be able to exploit it's project
> management features (including issue/bug tracking).  I have not yet begun
> to see to what extent Redmine's capabilities are complementary to OFBiz's
> capabilities or how much overlap there may be, e.g., WRT the work effort
> components).  While Redmine, itself, integrates into a couple version
> control products (notably Subversion), it does not seem to have, as far as
> I can tell, support for any of the UML diagrams.  What I am keeping an eye
> out for is an open source product that both relates each UML diagram (such
> as a use case scenario) to one or more items on a wish list (easily created
> in Redmine), as well as relating each use case diagram to the code that
> implements it.  Do you, or anyone else, know of an open source product that
> supports UML documentation, that could be integrated with Redmine?  One
> that can construct a suite of UML documents given a codebase (and that can
> be used to construct a complete set of UML diagrams, or at least use case
> and E-R diagrams, for OFBiz, WordPress and Redmine), would be particularly
> useful as that could automatically provide core design documentation, and
> the use case documents could be used both to provide feature lists and a
> suite of howto documents.  Is there any automated tool to make the
> documentation task easier?
>
> One of the things that makes this especially daunting is that OFBiz is Java
> while Wordpress is PHP and Redmine is Ruby.  And there are a few features
> that do not seem to exist that I would probably implement in a mix of Perl
> and C++.  Integration of web apps involving such a mix of languages is
> something I have not yet tried (all the web apps I have developed have been
> either entirely Perl (with JavaScript on the client side) or a mix of Java
> Servlets+JSP/JSF, so I am unsure of how to integrate two apps that use very
> different technologies, and especially how to maintain session info in that
> effort.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ted
>

[Mike Z]

These are pretty impressive numbers.  A couple of questions Nick;

1) Is this a single machine, or multiple load balanced?  Normally in prod
environments you'd have multiple to provide some level of redundancy.

2) What type of machine is this? Is a VM, Amazon AWS, stand alone, number
of cores, RAM, etc.

3) What were the java memory settings (you mentioned that you had to tweak
them).

4) The cache optimizations you mention.  Are these already included in the
bigfish download/demo?

5) Are any of these documented?  I noticed that bigfish has impressive
documentation (well done!).

Thanks!



On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 4:06 AM, Nick Rosser <[hidden email]> wrote:

> All,
>
> I thought I'd share some encouraging news from a recent implementation we
> were involved in:
>
>  * we built a site for a Philly based jeweler who has some unique
>    products geared for Valentine's Day
>  * they start their sale on 1-Jan, it typically gains real momentum by
>    the end of Jan, and peaks around the 11th, 12th Feb
>  * peak #visitors (day): 20,000
>  * peak #pageviews (day): 150,000
>  * peak #orders (day): ~4000
>  * peak #concurrent users: 275
>
> And perhaps the most impressive fact around performance was that during
> peak the site was flying, no noticeable difference if there was a single
> user or 275 concurrent users.
>
> My conclusion is that the OFBiz caching model works really well when
> configured correctly (together with good memory allocation and settings).
> We also spent a great deal of time tuning our BigFish solution,
> specifically around the usage of the entity model layer (really just making
> sure we always use cache calls). We logged all SQL calls, and then analyzed
> the code to remove a second execution of any SQL call (since it should be
> cached). The Grinder was used to monitor and gauge performance
> improvements. All in all very encouraging and gives great confidence of
> marketing this solution into the largest organizations.
>
> I would personally like to thank the key committers who built the caching
> functionality -- it's a little tricky to understand, use and configure but
> once that is overcome it works impressively.
>
> We have been involved in some IBM Websphere Commerce implementations and
> I'm really beginning to wonder why the software and implementations are
> 10-20 times more expensive. With OFBiz we have an enterprise solution, with
> affordability for a small business.
>
> I'd be interested in any stories in the community around performance and
> high levels of order taking --- these case studies can really increase
> adoption of OFBiz. Stability and scalability are often at the top of
> anyone's list when looking at a new platform. Any stories out there?
>
> Check out the site: www.ihatestevensinger.com. It's built using our
> BigFish solution. More at http://bigfish.solveda.com.
>
> Nick
>
>

[Len Shein-3]

Mike,

 

1) Is this a single machine, or multiple load balanced?  Normally in prod

environments you'd have multiple to provide some level of redundancy.

 

One Server with Application (Ofbiz/BigFish)

One Server with DB

One Server with Apache

 

2) What type of machine is this? Is a VM, Amazon AWS, stand alone, number

of cores, RAM, etc.

 

Amazon AWS/EC2 instance with 2 CPUs, 7.5GB RAM

 

3) What were the java memory settings (you mentioned that you had to tweak

them).

 

Xms/Xmx = 5120M

MaxPermSize = 1024m

The teak was to allocate the same amount of memory to Xms and Xmx allocating
JVM on application startup.

 

4) The cache optimizations you mention.  Are these already included in the

bigfish download/demo?

5) Are any of these documented?  I noticed that bigfish has impressive

documentation (well done!).

 

Yes, you can also review the Cache settings in the BigFish Help
Documentation.

 

http://bigfish.solveda.com/help/guideCachingAndMemory.htm

 

 

Regards

Len

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 4:29 PM
To: user
Subject: Re: OFBiz Performance, a good story

 

These are pretty impressive numbers.  A couple of questions Nick;

 

1) Is this a single machine, or multiple load balanced?  Normally in prod

environments you'd have multiple to provide some level of redundancy.

 

2) What type of machine is this? Is a VM, Amazon AWS, stand alone, number

of cores, RAM, etc.

 

3) What were the java memory settings (you mentioned that you had to tweak

them).

 

4) The cache optimizations you mention.  Are these already included in the

bigfish download/demo?

 

5) Are any of these documented?  I noticed that bigfish has impressive

documentation (well done!).

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 4:06 AM, Nick Rosser <[hidden email]> wrote:

 

> All,

>

> I thought I'd share some encouraging news from a recent implementation we

> were involved in:

>

>  * we built a site for a Philly based jeweler who has some unique

>    products geared for Valentine's Day

>  * they start their sale on 1-Jan, it typically gains real momentum by

>    the end of Jan, and peaks around the 11th, 12th Feb

>  * peak #visitors (day): 20,000

>  * peak #pageviews (day): 150,000

>  * peak #orders (day): ~4000

>  * peak #concurrent users: 275

>

> And perhaps the most impressive fact around performance was that during

> peak the site was flying, no noticeable difference if there was a single

> user or 275 concurrent users.

>

> My conclusion is that the OFBiz caching model works really well when

> configured correctly (together with good memory allocation and settings).

> We also spent a great deal of time tuning our BigFish solution,

> specifically around the usage of the entity model layer (really just
making

> sure we always use cache calls). We logged all SQL calls, and then
analyzed

> the code to remove a second execution of any SQL call (since it should be

> cached). The Grinder was used to monitor and gauge performance

> improvements. All in all very encouraging and gives great confidence of

> marketing this solution into the largest organizations.

>

> I would personally like to thank the key committers who built the caching

> functionality -- it's a little tricky to understand, use and configure but

> once that is overcome it works impressively.

>

> We have been involved in some IBM Websphere Commerce implementations and

> I'm really beginning to wonder why the software and implementations are

> 10-20 times more expensive. With OFBiz we have an enterprise solution,
with

> affordability for a small business.

>

> I'd be interested in any stories in the community around performance and

> high levels of order taking --- these case studies can really increase

> adoption of OFBiz. Stability and scalability are often at the top of

> anyone's list when looking at a new platform. Any stories out there?

>

> Check out the site: www.ihatestevensinger.com. It's built using our

> BigFish solution. More at http://bigfish.solveda.com.

>

> Nick

>

>

[Jacques Le Roux]

I'm not quite sure what you are looking for

Before living the project David created a space for requirements https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBREQDES/Home But it's not open like the
wiki.

In the wiki you have this blank page https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Requirements+gathering with children pages

You can edit and create you own pages in the wiki as soon as you are registered as a contributor (see explanation at top of each wiki page)

HTH

Jacques

Le 13/02/2014 20:22, Todd Thorner a écrit :

> Hi Ted,
>
> I'm still in full-doofus mode regarding OFBiz and its capabilities for
> integrating with third-party services/apps from various
> frameworks/languages.  I'm not even strong enough on the uptake to know
> whether something like the ASF's Camel project might be stepping in the
> right direction.
>
> I haven't thought much about UML diagramming tools since I used the old
> Rational Rose product while doing some Struts 1.x web app programming
> (over 10 years ago).  I'm afraid that when it comes to
> design/development/implementation this tech writer is always playing
> catch-up with the professionals.  Documentation is my strength.
>
> That said, diagramming some use cases in UML would be an important
> consideration for coming up with answers to various questions that
> C-levels might have while conducting OFBiz cost-benefit analyses.  I
> know that Ruth Hoffman wrote a great introductory book about high-level
> OFBiz ecommerce functionality, a solid jumping-off point for business
> managers who are as IT-non-savvy as I am.
>
> I am among the demographic of end users for such hand-holding
> documentation.  How can another OFBIz-related project help potential end
> users take that next step from Hoffman's introductory book toward
> practical milestones?
>
> Perhaps gathering requirements would be a reasonable place to start.  I
> will evaluate options for hosting such a collaborative documentation
> project (question for OFBiz site admins: is there a sandbox area in the
> wiki that is available?)
>
> I sense a tiny bit of traction.  Here's hoping it gets beyond just a few
> people talking around one another.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 14-02-13 10:12 AM, Ted Byers wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Todd Thorner <[hidden email]>wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you, Mr. Byers, for posting such a remark-worthy suggestion, and
>>> thank you, Mr. Rosser, for providing the inertia that might help start
>>> an exciting new OFBiz-related project (congrats as well on securing a
>>> happy jeweler client).
>>>
>>> I would be an enthusiastic participant in any documentation project
>>> whose outcome helped business managers become dedicated OFBiz end users.
>>>   Indeed, I am one such hopeful business manager, excited by the prospect
>>> of having OFBiz at the core of my transactional processes, daunted by
>>> the IT learning curve.
>>>
>>> I am by trade a tech writer with over 15 years of experience, mostly
>>> doing API docs for SDK products.  I also have a Fine Arts degree in
>>> Creative Writing, and those two properties combined make me one of the
>>> most sought-after writers in the Vancouver IT industry.  I am, though,
>>> as I said, now working on becoming a successful business owner.
>>>
>>>  From my perspective, this might be a proverbial golden opportunity.  I
>>> would learn a lot and move up that learning curve, plus I have much to
>>> offer those who seek to improve OFBiz documentation and attract more
>>> CFOs & CMOs to the product.
>>>
>>> I ask the community how a prospective team might start a workflow (Agile
>>> or whatever) for such a project.  Would a focal point of managing
>>> productivity be JIRA or something like that?  Is there an
>>> eat-the-dog-food instance of OFBiz out there allowing authorized
>>> contributors to use its Scrum functionality?  Maybe even its CMS
>>> interface?  I would love to help make OFBiz compatible with any
>>> arbitrary CMIS-compliant product, but that's just me...
>>>
>>> Thanks for everything that everyone does to make this product world-class.
>>>
>>>
>> You're welcome Todd,
>>
>> I don't have a specific answer for the questions you raise.  I generally go
>> with whatever works with the team with whom I am working at the time.
>>
>> My priority, right now, is to first learn how to set up a multi-tenant
>> installation of OFBiz, as well as a multi-site installation of wordpress;
>> and then how to integrate the two so that OFBiz's ecommerce component can
>> be used to handle payment for subscriptions to the contents on one or more
>> of the sites in the Wordpress installation.  I'd also want to be able to
>> support use of, the relevant back office components (e.g. the accounting),
>> for a venture that is focused on publishing.
>>
>> I then want to install Redmine, in order to be able to exploit it's project
>> management features (including issue/bug tracking).  I have not yet begun
>> to see to what extent Redmine's capabilities are complementary to OFBiz's
>> capabilities or how much overlap there may be, e.g., WRT the work effort
>> components).  While Redmine, itself, integrates into a couple version
>> control products (notably Subversion), it does not seem to have, as far as
>> I can tell, support for any of the UML diagrams.  What I am keeping an eye
>> out for is an open source product that both relates each UML diagram (such
>> as a use case scenario) to one or more items on a wish list (easily created
>> in Redmine), as well as relating each use case diagram to the code that
>> implements it.  Do you, or anyone else, know of an open source product that
>> supports UML documentation, that could be integrated with Redmine?  One
>> that can construct a suite of UML documents given a codebase (and that can
>> be used to construct a complete set of UML diagrams, or at least use case
>> and E-R diagrams, for OFBiz, WordPress and Redmine), would be particularly
>> useful as that could automatically provide core design documentation, and
>> the use case documents could be used both to provide feature lists and a
>> suite of howto documents.  Is there any automated tool to make the
>> documentation task easier?
>>
>> One of the things that makes this especially daunting is that OFBiz is Java
>> while Wordpress is PHP and Redmine is Ruby.  And there are a few features
>> that do not seem to exist that I would probably implement in a mix of Perl
>> and C++.  Integration of web apps involving such a mix of languages is
>> something I have not yet tried (all the web apps I have developed have been
>> either entirely Perl (with JavaScript on the client side) or a mix of Java
>> Servlets+JSP/JSF, so I am unsure of how to integrate two apps that use very
>> different technologies, and especially how to maintain session info in that
>> effort.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Ted
>>

[Todd Thorner]

Thanks very much for the information, Mr. Le Roux.  I'm not sure what I
might be able to do to help the project, so I'll look into the
contributor thing.  Considering how little time I've had to spend on my
company's OFBiz rollout, I'm still counted among the newest of the
newbies.  I am starting to learn a few things, though, from following
these mailing list threads.

From the long "OFBiz.org site: easier navigation to Service Providers
and End Users" thread that's been bouncing around here (it has evolved
into more of an admin discussion than a user discussion), I gather that
I could create my own OFBiz-related content (e.g. documentation) to be
hosted elsewhere, so long as I adhere to OFBiz/ASF guidelines.  Heck,
even books are possible, if I manage to grab enough of a clue.

All in all, I need to learn more before I can start creating anything.
That's ok, though, I'm accustomed to the tech writer process.  I don't
want to take up people's time on this user-specific mailing list for the
sake of a corollary technical project, so I'll try to keep it to a bunch
of "Hey, how does this work in OFBiz" questions until I have some kind
of alpha-release announcement for other users.

Thanks again.




On 14-02-23 04:39 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:

> I'm not quite sure what you are looking for
>
> Before living the project David created a space for requirements
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBREQDES/Home But it's not
> open like the wiki.
>
> In the wiki you have this blank page
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Requirements+gathering
> with children pages
>
> You can edit and create you own pages in the wiki as soon as you are
> registered as a contributor (see explanation at top of each wiki page)
>
> HTH
>
> Jacques
>
> Le 13/02/2014 20:22, Todd Thorner a écrit :
>> Hi Ted,
>>
>> I'm still in full-doofus mode regarding OFBiz and its capabilities for
>> integrating with third-party services/apps from various
>> frameworks/languages.  I'm not even strong enough on the uptake to know
>> whether something like the ASF's Camel project might be stepping in the
>> right direction.
>>
>> I haven't thought much about UML diagramming tools since I used the old
>> Rational Rose product while doing some Struts 1.x web app programming
>> (over 10 years ago).  I'm afraid that when it comes to
>> design/development/implementation this tech writer is always playing
>> catch-up with the professionals.  Documentation is my strength.
>>
>> That said, diagramming some use cases in UML would be an important
>> consideration for coming up with answers to various questions that
>> C-levels might have while conducting OFBiz cost-benefit analyses.  I
>> know that Ruth Hoffman wrote a great introductory book about high-level
>> OFBiz ecommerce functionality, a solid jumping-off point for business
>> managers who are as IT-non-savvy as I am.
>>
>> I am among the demographic of end users for such hand-holding
>> documentation.  How can another OFBIz-related project help potential end
>> users take that next step from Hoffman's introductory book toward
>> practical milestones?
>>
>> Perhaps gathering requirements would be a reasonable place to start.  I
>> will evaluate options for hosting such a collaborative documentation
>> project (question for OFBiz site admins: is there a sandbox area in the
>> wiki that is available?)
>>
>> I sense a tiny bit of traction.  Here's hoping it gets beyond just a few
>> people talking around one another.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 14-02-13 10:12 AM, Ted Byers wrote:
>>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Todd Thorner
>>> <[hidden email]>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thank you, Mr. Byers, for posting such a remark-worthy suggestion, and
>>>> thank you, Mr. Rosser, for providing the inertia that might help start
>>>> an exciting new OFBiz-related project (congrats as well on securing a
>>>> happy jeweler client).
>>>>
>>>> I would be an enthusiastic participant in any documentation project
>>>> whose outcome helped business managers become dedicated OFBiz end
>>>> users.
>>>>   Indeed, I am one such hopeful business manager, excited by the
>>>> prospect
>>>> of having OFBiz at the core of my transactional processes, daunted by
>>>> the IT learning curve.
>>>>
>>>> I am by trade a tech writer with over 15 years of experience, mostly
>>>> doing API docs for SDK products.  I also have a Fine Arts degree in
>>>> Creative Writing, and those two properties combined make me one of the
>>>> most sought-after writers in the Vancouver IT industry.  I am, though,
>>>> as I said, now working on becoming a successful business owner.
>>>>
>>>>  From my perspective, this might be a proverbial golden opportunity.  I
>>>> would learn a lot and move up that learning curve, plus I have much to
>>>> offer those who seek to improve OFBiz documentation and attract more
>>>> CFOs & CMOs to the product.
>>>>
>>>> I ask the community how a prospective team might start a workflow
>>>> (Agile
>>>> or whatever) for such a project.  Would a focal point of managing
>>>> productivity be JIRA or something like that?  Is there an
>>>> eat-the-dog-food instance of OFBiz out there allowing authorized
>>>> contributors to use its Scrum functionality?  Maybe even its CMS
>>>> interface?  I would love to help make OFBiz compatible with any
>>>> arbitrary CMIS-compliant product, but that's just me...
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for everything that everyone does to make this product
>>>> world-class.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You're welcome Todd,
>>>
>>> I don't have a specific answer for the questions you raise.  I
>>> generally go
>>> with whatever works with the team with whom I am working at the time.
>>>
>>> My priority, right now, is to first learn how to set up a multi-tenant
>>> installation of OFBiz, as well as a multi-site installation of
>>> wordpress;
>>> and then how to integrate the two so that OFBiz's ecommerce component
>>> can
>>> be used to handle payment for subscriptions to the contents on one or
>>> more
>>> of the sites in the Wordpress installation.  I'd also want to be able to
>>> support use of, the relevant back office components (e.g. the
>>> accounting),
>>> for a venture that is focused on publishing.
>>>
>>> I then want to install Redmine, in order to be able to exploit it's
>>> project
>>> management features (including issue/bug tracking).  I have not yet
>>> begun
>>> to see to what extent Redmine's capabilities are complementary to
>>> OFBiz's
>>> capabilities or how much overlap there may be, e.g., WRT the work effort
>>> components).  While Redmine, itself, integrates into a couple version
>>> control products (notably Subversion), it does not seem to have, as
>>> far as
>>> I can tell, support for any of the UML diagrams.  What I am keeping
>>> an eye
>>> out for is an open source product that both relates each UML diagram
>>> (such
>>> as a use case scenario) to one or more items on a wish list (easily
>>> created
>>> in Redmine), as well as relating each use case diagram to the code that
>>> implements it.  Do you, or anyone else, know of an open source
>>> product that
>>> supports UML documentation, that could be integrated with Redmine?  One
>>> that can construct a suite of UML documents given a codebase (and
>>> that can
>>> be used to construct a complete set of UML diagrams, or at least use
>>> case
>>> and E-R diagrams, for OFBiz, WordPress and Redmine), would be
>>> particularly
>>> useful as that could automatically provide core design documentation,
>>> and
>>> the use case documents could be used both to provide feature lists and a
>>> suite of howto documents.  Is there any automated tool to make the
>>> documentation task easier?
>>>
>>> One of the things that makes this especially daunting is that OFBiz
>>> is Java
>>> while Wordpress is PHP and Redmine is Ruby.  And there are a few
>>> features
>>> that do not seem to exist that I would probably implement in a mix of
>>> Perl
>>> and C++.  Integration of web apps involving such a mix of languages is
>>> something I have not yet tried (all the web apps I have developed
>>> have been
>>> either entirely Perl (with JavaScript on the client side) or a mix of
>>> Java
>>> Servlets+JSP/JSF, so I am unsure of how to integrate two apps that
>>> use very
>>> different technologies, and especially how to maintain session info
>>> in that
>>> effort.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Ted
>>>