Re: Users - Spring vs Ofbiz http://ofbizwiki.go-integral.com/Wiki.jsp?page=FAQ1

[David E. Jones]

Are you asking how much additional work would be required to build  
something like OFBiz using Spring/Hibernate versus the OFBiz  
framework? I really wouldn't know... I could guess, but to  
effectively answer that question would require some pretty tricky  
studying of efforts done by people experienced with both, or perhaps  
in a larger group to reduce personal variations, groups of people  
very experienced with one or the other. You're getting into human  
performance questions and that is impossibly complex...

We have worked with people who are somewhat experienced with both and  
OFBiz is significantly more efficient. At the time the OFBiz tools  
were created neither Hibernate nor Spring existed, but compared to  
the tools available at the time OFBiz is easily an order of magnitude  
more efficient. That I can say based on experience because I spent  
about a year and a half doing development with those sorts of tools.  
I have evaluated Spring and Hibernate since then, and they are an  
improvement over previous tools but there is still a HUGE difference:  
those are technical level tools meant to solve technical problems,  
not business problems. The gap between them and business problems is  
still huge. The OFBiz framework is meant to directly address business  
problems with much higher level tools, though not so simple and  
inflexible as a typical 4GL system which usually become cumbersome  
due to inflexibility and limitations.

If you are experienced with Spring and Hibernate, then you may want  
to look at the OFBiz tools to see how they do things. Just keep in  
mind that these tools are meant for facilitating the creation and  
maintenance of thousands of data, logic and user interface elements.  
Creating a single page is certainly more cumbersome with OFBiz, but  
"hello world" examples are not what it is meant, and maintaining lots  
of pages is WAY easier...

Of course, you could rewrite all of the OFBiz applications (ie data,  
logic and UI layers) using Spring and Hibernate plus the dozens of  
other components and libraries to fill in gaps in those and form a  
more complete framework. It would be a good idea, in my opinion, to  
do it based on a service oriented architecture like the one in OFBiz,  
but if you like the object oriented approach where you have an OO  
core and mapping objects for every little thing to make it work with  
services, databases, web browsers, and so on, then I wish you well in  
the happy world of 10x redundancy...

Hopefully that explains a bit more behind my comments. This is a  
really big deal. Try building an ERP system based on object oriented  
tools and you'll see pretty quick why this has never really been  
successfully done...

-David


On Feb 10, 2006, at 6:24 AM, Artjom Galliardt wrote:

> Hello David,
> my name is Artjom Galliardt and I am a developer some people call  
> us consultants but how ever ;-).
> A colleague who worked on Messer Group project showed me ofbiz at  
> the time I was reading some Spring documentations.
> I am pragmatic and not religious about deveopment techniques and  
> always open for new. I want to take up the note you made in the  
> Spring vs. Ofbiz topic which was quite valuable at this point.
>
> " This is not a small task or a mickey mouse scope. Even if we put  
> months into rewriting things to use Hibernate or Spring that  
> wouldn't be the end of the cost. The increased inefficiency and  
> higher volume and complexity of code would continue to increase the  
> cost and effort of the project for as long as it lasts. "
>
> Do you have any further estimation information according to this  
> topic above?
> Basically I Iooked at the data model level and I think it is quite  
> imressive and enhances and would like to see how such a structure  
> could be adopted in other projects/products.
> Thanks and Regards,
> Artjom

 
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