Ofbiz Newbie Needs Guidance

[Arpit Gadle]

Hello Everyone,

I am a newbie to Ofbiz. I am having 4 yrs of exp in Java Technology and
MySQL database.
Recently I have been assigned a task by the company to develop ERP using
Ofbiz. I had installed and developed a demoapp ofbiz component successfully
and also configured Ofbiz installation with MySQL. I had gone through the
ofbiz core components and found that I cannot  reuse and also cannot extend
those components as our requirement is very complex and flexible.

I would like to ask you guys few things

1) Can I develop whole new ERP from ground-zero using Ofbiz (as i
created demoapp)?
2) How can Ofbiz will help me as I won't be using any core components?
3) Can I create and use a separate database for the development other than
ofbiz,ofbizolap and ofbiztenant?
4) We are having a MySQL DBA with us who will be designing the new ERP
database. Are there any rules or conventions to follow when working with
Ofbiz.


I apologize If I had made some mistakes or

asked some questions not pertaining to this mailing list.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks & Regards,

Arpit Gadle

[Paul Foxworthy]

Hi Arpit,

If you use just the framework part of OFBiz, you can create pretty much any web application. You can think of the framework as another web application framework, something like Spring, Struts and so on. For example, Atlassian's Jira product is not in any way an ERP system, but uses the OFBiz framework.

If you like what you've seen of the OFBiz way, using the framework is a possibility, and yes, you could reinvent a different ERP system based on the framework.

That said, I find it hard to believe that nothing in OFBiz would be relevant to an ERP application. Surely your application will deal with Parties, Products, Services, Orders, Invoices, Payments, Inventory and so on. I suggest you reconsider *extending* OFBiz instead of rewriting it. If you haven't read The Data Model Resource Book (https://cwiki.apache.org/OFBADMIN/ofbiz-related-books.html), I strongly suggest you do before embarking on defining your entities, and that applies whether or not you do decide to rewrite. OFBiz's data model is based on the book, although there are differences.

Have you looked at the services in OFBiz separately from the screens in the demo application? The demo is just that, a demo and not a finished application. It tends to expose all the knobs and dials when for a given application you would be happy to hide away some portion of them. So I would expect that you would vary screens, remove some, and change the workflow of others. But the screens would call on services, and there would be less changes there.

I understand you would want your own entities, and that is fine. But if they have relationships to standard OFBiz entities like Party, why not store them in the ofbiz database?

As for working with your DBA: model the entities first. OFBiz will automatically create tables to persist entity data, so there should be less work for your DBA to do. The Data Model Resource Book will give you some ideas about conventions. There are conventions for types of entities and additional attributes, see the discussion at https://cwiki.apache.org/OFBTECH/general-entity-overview.html and look for examples in OFBiz.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Paul Foxworthy

Arpit Gadle wrote

Hello Everyone,

I am a newbie to Ofbiz. I am having 4 yrs of exp in Java Technology and
MySQL database.
Recently I have been assigned a task by the company to develop ERP using
Ofbiz. I had installed and developed a demoapp ofbiz component successfully
and also configured Ofbiz installation with MySQL. I had gone through the
ofbiz core components and found that I cannot  reuse and also cannot extend
those components as our requirement is very complex and flexible.

I would like to ask you guys few things

1) Can I develop whole new ERP from ground-zero using Ofbiz (as i
created demoapp)?
2) How can Ofbiz will help me as I won't be using any core components?
3) Can I create and use a separate database for the development other than
ofbiz,ofbizolap and ofbiztenant?
4) We are having a MySQL DBA with us who will be designing the new ERP
database. Are there any rules or conventions to follow when working with
Ofbiz.


I apologize If I had made some mistakes or

asked some questions not pertaining to this mailing list.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks & Regards,

Arpit Gadle

[Atul Vani]

Extending it is a far better option and must work for you, I believe. But  
if for some reason that doesn't happen, you might wanna try moqui instead  
of cleaning all the stuff from OFBiz.

http://www.moqui.org/


On Wed, 08 May 2013 06:54:36 +0530, Paul Foxworthy <[hidden email]>  
wrote:

> Hi Arpit,
>
> If you use just the framework part of OFBiz, you can create pretty much  
> any
> web application. You can think of the framework as another web  
> application
> framework, something like Spring, Struts and so on. For example,  
> Atlassian's
> Jira product is not in any way an ERP system, but uses the OFBiz  
> framework.
>
> If you like what you've seen of the OFBiz way, using the framework is a
> possibility, and yes, you could reinvent a different ERP system based on  
> the
> framework.
>
> That said, I find it hard to believe that nothing in OFBiz would be  
> relevant
> to an ERP application. Surely your application will deal with Parties,
> Products, Services, Orders, Invoices, Payments, Inventory and so on. I
> suggest you reconsider *extending* OFBiz instead of rewriting it. If you
> haven't read The Data Model Resource Book
> (https://cwiki.apache.org/OFBADMIN/ofbiz-related-books.html), I strongly
> suggest you do before embarking on defining your entities, and that  
> applies
> whether or not you do decide to rewrite. OFBiz's data model is based on  
> the
> book, although there are differences.
>
> Have you looked at the services in OFBiz separately from the screens in  
> the
> demo application? The demo is just that, a demo and not a finished
> application. It tends to expose all the knobs and dials when for a given
> application you would be happy to hide away some portion of them. So I  
> would
> expect that you would vary screens, remove some, and change the workflow  
> of
> others. But the screens would call on services, and there would be less
> changes there.
>
> I understand you would want your own entities, and that is fine. But if  
> they
> have relationships to standard OFBiz entities like Party, why not store  
> them
> in the ofbiz database?
>
> As for working with your DBA: model the entities first. OFBiz will
> automatically create tables to persist entity data, so there should be  
> less
> work for your DBA to do. The Data Model Resource Book will give you some
> ideas about conventions. There are conventions for types of entities and
> additional attributes, see the discussion at
> https://cwiki.apache.org/OFBTECH/general-entity-overview.html and look  
> for
> examples in OFBiz.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Regards
>
> Paul Foxworthy
>
>
> Arpit Gadle wrote
>> Hello Everyone,
>>
>> I am a newbie to Ofbiz. I am having 4 yrs of exp in Java Technology and
>> MySQL database.
>> Recently I have been assigned a task by the company to develop ERP using
>> Ofbiz. I had installed and developed a demoapp ofbiz component
>> successfully
>> and also configured Ofbiz installation with MySQL. I had gone through  
>> the
>> ofbiz core components and found that I cannot  reuse and also cannot
>> extend
>> those components as our requirement is very complex and flexible.
>>
>> I would like to ask you guys few things
>>
>> 1) Can I develop whole new ERP from ground-zero using Ofbiz (as i
>> created demoapp)?
>> 2) How can Ofbiz will help me as I won't be using any core components?
>> 3) Can I create and use a separate database for the development other  
>> than
>> ofbiz,ofbizolap and ofbiztenant?
>> 4) We are having a MySQL DBA with us who will be designing the new ERP
>> database. Are there any rules or conventions to follow when working with
>> Ofbiz.
>>
>>
>> I apologize If I had made some mistakes or
>>
>> asked some questions not pertaining to this mailing list.
>>
>> Any help is greatly appreciated
>>
>> Thanks & Regards,
>>
>> Arpit Gadle
>
>
>
>
>
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> --
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> http://www.coherentsoftware.com.au/
>
> Bonsai ERP, the all-inclusive ERP system
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>
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> View this message in context:  
> http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Ofbiz-Newbie-Needs-Guidance-tp4641068p4641075.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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