[OFBiz] Users - Re: Can OfBiz actually run a business?

[Rohit Rai]

I do not want to take side in the discussion because frankly I don't know and it is the same for most of the new users out there. I primary want Ofbiz to be ready for the prime time. May be not an out of the box solution but one of the most viable solutions to be implemented by any company.

 

Earlier I had suggested a full feature study of Ofbiz and other ERPs with comparisions and contradictions. We will get to know where do we stand. I wrote on how Ofbiz faces Netsuite on first look but then I would like to go further with it. How it stands up with other Prop ERP solutions and also with Open Source Compiere.

 

You may respond to it here: http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com/2005/08/ofbiz-vs-netsuite-os-vs-prop.html

 

Second thing is WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT REPORTING?

 

I think we should incorporate some standard reporting engine in Ofbiz. So that there is a nice and easy way to generate reports. I have gone through four possible alternative BIRT, Datavision, JasperReports and JFreeReports. Have just put an initial comparision here: http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com

 

May be I am suggesting too much, but instead of going about doing things alone I believe in going with the community because doing it all alone will neither be economically feasible neither practically possible.

 

I suggest we have some kind of standard development environment forOfbiz. like SAP has Netweaver. Probably built around Eclipse. I would like to know what others think? If we can form a project for it I am willing to take the initiative. But I think David, Si Chen or someone else will be a better leader for the project. and going with eclipse we will actually get a wider community support.

 

Also about Neogia, why don't integrate the additional stuff from that in Ofbiz. The project also has somekind of generators. These could prove as the base for begining with Eclipse.

 

Last but not the least, Lets try to implement Ram and Glen's solutions as a Ofbiz community effort. If succesful they can donate some funds to the time put in by the community that will help us move faster. Probably go on towards releasing the Accounting/GL module and also will prove out to be a nice example of Open Source Strength. I suggest hosting to different projects for both of them on sourceforge and when we have the results we can merge them back in the original tree. This will also save us from breaking the existing development system. Their requirements can always be built up as Ofbiz Applications so it doesn't break the base.

 

 
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[David E. Jones]

On Aug 23, 2005, at 2:11 PM, Rohit Rai wrote:

>  Second thing is WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT REPORTING?
>
> I think we should incorporate some standard reporting engine in  
> Ofbiz. So that there is a nice and easy way to generate reports. I  
> have gone through four possible alternative BIRT, Datavision,  
> JasperReports and JFreeReports. Have just put an initial  
> comparision here: http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com

There are a few options for reporting in OFBiz, and various examples  
using different technologies. For flexibility of documents to be  
printed it's hard to beat XFL:FO and FOP so we use that for printing  
orders, invoices, checks, and even pick/pack reports. Other reporting  
tools have their pluses and minuses.

I did some research on this a while back and open source reporting  
tools were still very much maturing (ie weren't yet mature), so we  
haven't been able to pump out a large set of reports based on those.  
If anyone knows of or is using one that satisfies their needs it  
would be great to have that feedback.


 
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[David E. Jones]

> Earlier I had suggested a full feature study of Ofbiz and other  
> ERPs with comparisions and contradictions. We will get to know  
> where do we stand. I wrote on how Ofbiz faces Netsuite on first  
> look but then I would like to go further with it. How it stands up  
> with other Prop ERP solutions and also with Open Source Compiere.
>
> You may respond to it here: http://mytechrantings.blogspot.com/ 
> 2005/08/ofbiz-vs-netsuite-os-vs-prop.html

This would be a great thing to have, though even better after certain  
parts of OFBiz mature more. In areas where OFBiz is strong I'm  
confident that we can handle things far better than NetSuite and many  
other ERP packages. However, many areas that lots of companies need  
are not well represented on any layer except the data model layer at  
this point.

In any case comparisons between anything with so many moving parts is  
not an easy thing, and to be "precise" you would have to have  
hundreds of thousands of comparison points. That not being possible  
some level of "approximation" is needed, and the items you choose to  
focus on or leave out can significantly skew the results.

The fact of the matter is that some high level comparisons can be  
helpful when based on general principles that have been shown to make  
a difference in real world usage. However, only when more is known  
about the intended use can really effective granular evaluation be  
done. TEC (Technology Evaluation Centers) has a reasonably good  
balance of these things for general systems and more specific systems  
and industries. You might want to look there...

-David
 
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[David E. Jones]

> May be I am suggesting too much, but instead of going about doing  
> things alone I believe in going with the community because doing it  
> all alone will neither be economically feasible neither practically  
> possible.
>
> I suggest we have some kind of standard development environment  
> forOfbiz. like SAP has Netweaver. Probably built around Eclipse. I  
> would like to know what others think? If we can form a project for  
> it I am willing to take the initiative. But I think David, Si Chen  
> or someone else will be a better leader for the project. and going  
> with eclipse we will actually get a wider community support.

I'm not sure what the point of this would be. How would it help if  
everyone used Eclipse? Creating plugins for Eclipse that help with  
OFBiz development would be great, and then there would be a reason to  
use Eclipse (or create versions of the plugins that also work with  
other IDEs), but outside of that I'm not sure I see the point.

Could you describe more of that?

-David

 
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[David E. Jones]

I'm going to answer this email in sections because there are many  
topics here. Many of these have been discussed before but perhaps  
keeping them alive is a good thing...

On Aug 23, 2005, at 2:11 PM, Rohit Rai wrote:

> I do not want to take side in the discussion because frankly I  
> don't know and it is the same for most of the new users out there.  
> I primary want Ofbiz to be ready for the prime time. May be not an  
> out of the box solution but one of the most viable solutions to be  
> implemented by any company.

I do hope that in short order (perhaps within a year?) OFBiz will be  
ready to run many different types of businesses as a stable  
deployable solution out of the box. Getting to that point is not easy  
though, especially with the breadth and flexibility that we are going  
after with OFBiz. It might be a lot easier and faster to develop  
something that is sufficient (but not good) for smaller companies and  
has a lot of hacks in it, but we are really trying to create a system  
based on a data model that can handle much of the nature of the world  
we live in. That's why we don't have a "customer" table with field  
like first name, last name, home phone, work phone, etc. That would  
be easy to create, but just isn't flexible enough to handle the real  
world, whereas the Party and ContactMech model we are using based on  
The Data Model Resource Book really is sufficiently flexible.

So, yes, we're working on it but it does take time. It takes a lot of  
design time and study. It takes a lot of development time and review  
with real world companies to make sure it is applicable to at least a  
couple of slices of the real world pie.

It'll take some time even from now, but OFBiz will get there. I'm  
very confident in the momentum that now exists behind the project and  
many things are progressing now that have been stale and waiting for  
years. We can use all the help we can get too, so if anyone wants to  
help there are many things that can be worked on...

> Also about Neogia, why don't integrate the additional stuff from  
> that in Ofbiz. The project also has somekind of generators. These  
> could prove as the base for begining with Eclipse.

Well, there are various reasons we can't do this. The main one is  
that it is illegal to do so because of the way they chose to license  
Neogia. This was discussed a lot and complained about by various  
people when it originally happened, so you can find quite a bit about  
it in the mailing list archives. Neogia is GPL licensed so we can't  
include it in OFBiz, which was part of their intention. I guess they  
had investors or clients that didn't want to see people making money  
off of their efforts without getting their piece of the pie.

As far as tools go, I can imagine better things than generators to  
increase productivity. The whole point of the tools in the OFBiz  
framework is to act dynamically in place of code generators and focus  
on the decision points in the various things that need to be created.  
Navigation tools and tools to generate "stubs" would be quite  
valuable I think...

Still, anyone who wants to can use the Neogia generators in their own  
work and even to generate open source code not licensed under the GPL  
(I believe). However, the generation work style is somewhat  
concerning to me because it sacrifices reuse in many cases.

> Last but not the least, Lets try to implement Ram and Glen's  
> solutions as a Ofbiz community effort. If succesful they can donate  
> some funds to the time put in by the community that will help us  
> move faster. Probably go on towards releasing the Accounting/GL  
> module and also will prove out to be a nice example of Open Source  
> Strength. I suggest hosting to different projects for both of them  
> on sourceforge and when we have the results we can merge them back  
> in the original tree. This will also save us from breaking the  
> existing development system. Their requirements can always be built  
> up as Ofbiz Applications so it doesn't break the base.

I don't have much to say about this. However, I'm not sure if I like  
the idea of separate projects. Diverging concepts can be very hard to  
merge back together and doing them like that sacrifices the  
visibility and collaboration that is already built-up in OFBiz.  
Still, for new initiatives someone has to be the "lead" on it and  
push it. That's the important part and the community will only make  
it easier for that person and generate a better end result. That is  
my personal experience in spearheading efforts in OFBiz.

-David

 
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[Matt Penner]

I don't know about a dedicated development environment but I do believe a
set of IDE plug-ins could really help out.  

I think tools such as templating for boiler plate code, navigation tools
such as finding services from the controller, and Symantec checking of
non-java code like the minilang services would really help.

As I start getting more into OFBiz custom app development I had been
planning on exploring this area.  I'll share my progress, but I'm an
IntelliJ guy and not Eclipse.  I'm bias on my plug-in development.  :)

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]
On Behalf Of David E. Jones
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 8:37 PM
To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Users - Common IDE,Was: Can OfBiz actually run a
business?

> May be I am suggesting too much, but instead of going about doing  
> things alone I believe in going with the community because doing it  
> all alone will neither be economically feasible neither practically  
> possible.
>
> I suggest we have some kind of standard development environment  
> forOfbiz. like SAP has Netweaver. Probably built around Eclipse. I  
> would like to know what others think? If we can form a project for  
> it I am willing to take the initiative. But I think David, Si Chen  
> or someone else will be a better leader for the project. and going  
> with eclipse we will actually get a wider community support.

I'm not sure what the point of this would be. How would it help if  
everyone used Eclipse? Creating plugins for Eclipse that help with  
OFBiz development would be great, and then there would be a reason to  
use Eclipse (or create versions of the plugins that also work with  
other IDEs), but outside of that I'm not sure I see the point.

Could you describe more of that?

-David

 
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[Yannick Thebault]

Le Mercredi 24 Août 2005 05:43, David E. Jones a écrit :
>
> Still, anyone who wants to can use the Neogia generators in their own
> work and even to generate open source code not licensed under the GPL
> (I believe). However, the generation work style is somewhat
> concerning to me because it sacrifices reuse in many cases.
>
As member of Neogia project, I can reassure on this point. The Neogia
generators generate code licensed under the license used for the UML models.
So if you create some models released under MIT license, your generated code  
and the inherited developed code will be relased under MIT license.

Yannick

--
Yannick Thebault
Consultant
Tél : [phone]
Site projet : http://www.neogia.org/

Société Néréide
Tél : [phone]
Site : http://www.nereide.biz/
 
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