OfBiz beginner questions

[Ritesh Trivedi]

Hi,

Apologize if the question has been asked before.

I have been trying to read up all the available "free" documentation and I am bit confused.

1. The documentation for most part seems alteast a year or 2 old and doesnt seem totally relevent
2. Opentaps site has some good practices which contradict the development model suggested by OfBiz.
http://www.opentaps.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=82
They recommend not to use screens, widgets etc.

I would like to know the "Best Practises" for ecommerce site development using OfBiz. I totally understand the difference between the application development using Ofbiz and extending ofbiz itself. What I would like to know is whether its more productive to use Spring or any other UI framework rather than using screen and widgets etc. Seems like Entity engine and Service engines should be used.

Also, is there an  up to date documentation? paid or otherwise that will help with application (ecommerce site development) using OfBiz?

Thanks in advance

[David E Jones]

You didn't mention which OFBiz documentation you looked at, but there  
are certainly resources that are maintained over time and most of the  
older documents are still very applicable in spite of their age (most  
of the main patterns and lower level tools in OFBiz haven't changed in  
years... ie the framework was mostly complete 2-3 years and only small  
additions have been made since).

A good thing to read on tools to use is the Best Practices Guide:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Best+Practices+Guide

To understand how those tools work together and see some examples of  
using them, you should watch these and explore the supporting diagrams  
and documents:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBTECH/Framework+Introduction+Videos+and+Diagrams

In general the main documentation repository is the docs.ofbiz.org  
site, so that's where I'd start reading:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/

As for the opentaps (or more accurately, Open Source Strategies) way  
of doing things: that project is built based on OFBiz, but over time  
seems to be turning into more of a fork and they are certainly doing  
things differently.

While it is true that alternative open source framework elements exist  
for all parts of the OFBiz framework, you'll find the OFBiz way of  
doing things is very different, all stemming from using domain-
specific artifacts (mostly elements in XML files) rather than trying  
to make EVERYTHING an "object". There is no object-relation mapping in  
OFBiz, no object-service mapping, no object-screen or object-form  
mapping, or anything like that. Because of this the artifacts are  
significantly more efficient to work with and much easier to  
understand. There are lots of neat tools for doing all of the object  
mappings listed above, like Hibernate for object-relation mapping and  
Struts or JSF for object-screen/form/etc mapping, but by avoiding all  
of those things the size and redundancy in our code is smaller, and  
the flexibility is greater.

Enjoy...

-David


On Dec 31, 2007, at 12:58 PM, Ritz123 wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> Apologize if the question has been asked before.
>
> I have been trying to read up all the available "free" documentation  
> and I
> am bit confused.
>
> 1. The documentation for most part seems alteast a year or 2 old and  
> doesnt
> seem totally relevent
> 2. Opentaps site has some good practices which contradict the  
> development
> model suggested by OfBiz.
> http://www.opentaps.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=82
> They recommend not to use screens, widgets etc.
>
> I would like to know the "Best Practises" for ecommerce site  
> development
> using OfBiz. I totally understand the difference between the  
> application
> development using Ofbiz and extending ofbiz itself. What I would  
> like to
> know is whether its more productive to use Spring or any other UI  
> framework
> rather than using screen and widgets etc. Seems like Entity engine and
> Service engines should be used.
>
> Also, is there an  up to date documentation? paid or otherwise that  
> will
> help with application (ecommerce site development) using OfBiz?
>
> Thanks in advance
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/OfBiz-beginner-questions-tp14561529p14561529.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

[Ritesh Trivedi]

I looked at all the Ofbiz documentation links from the main documentation link/wiki/opensourcestrategies.

I guess its debatable whether everything configuration or convention is better. As always mixture of the two would be an ideal choice.

To me Ofbiz seems like it has bit too much configuration. It offers flexibility but its really difficult to remember all tags/attributes and their relation with other XML file entries etc, especially if you are a programmer you would rather code things than specify complex XML document relationships.

If you guys are taking inputs for the next version or otherwise for Ofbiz, I would like to vote for convention over configuration.

David E Jones wrote

You didn't mention which OFBiz documentation you looked at, but there  
are certainly resources that are maintained over time and most of the  
older documents are still very applicable in spite of their age (most  
of the main patterns and lower level tools in OFBiz haven't changed in  
years... ie the framework was mostly complete 2-3 years and only small  
additions have been made since).

A good thing to read on tools to use is the Best Practices Guide:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Best+Practices+Guide

To understand how those tools work together and see some examples of  
using them, you should watch these and explore the supporting diagrams  
and documents:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBTECH/Framework+Introduction+Videos+and+Diagrams

In general the main documentation repository is the docs.ofbiz.org  
site, so that's where I'd start reading:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/

As for the opentaps (or more accurately, Open Source Strategies) way  
of doing things: that project is built based on OFBiz, but over time  
seems to be turning into more of a fork and they are certainly doing  
things differently.

While it is true that alternative open source framework elements exist  
for all parts of the OFBiz framework, you'll find the OFBiz way of  
doing things is very different, all stemming from using domain-
specific artifacts (mostly elements in XML files) rather than trying  
to make EVERYTHING an "object". There is no object-relation mapping in  
OFBiz, no object-service mapping, no object-screen or object-form  
mapping, or anything like that. Because of this the artifacts are  
significantly more efficient to work with and much easier to  
understand. There are lots of neat tools for doing all of the object  
mappings listed above, like Hibernate for object-relation mapping and  
Struts or JSF for object-screen/form/etc mapping, but by avoiding all  
of those things the size and redundancy in our code is smaller, and  
the flexibility is greater.

Enjoy...

-David


On Dec 31, 2007, at 12:58 PM, Ritz123 wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> Apologize if the question has been asked before.
>
> I have been trying to read up all the available "free" documentation  
> and I
> am bit confused.
>
> 1. The documentation for most part seems alteast a year or 2 old and  
> doesnt
> seem totally relevent
> 2. Opentaps site has some good practices which contradict the  
> development
> model suggested by OfBiz.
> http://www.opentaps.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=82
> They recommend not to use screens, widgets etc.
>
> I would like to know the "Best Practises" for ecommerce site  
> development
> using OfBiz. I totally understand the difference between the  
> application
> development using Ofbiz and extending ofbiz itself. What I would  
> like to
> know is whether its more productive to use Spring or any other UI  
> framework
> rather than using screen and widgets etc. Seems like Entity engine and
> Service engines should be used.
>
> Also, is there an  up to date documentation? paid or otherwise that  
> will
> help with application (ecommerce site development) using OfBiz?
>
> Thanks in advance
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/OfBiz-beginner-questions-tp14561529p14561529.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>