http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/OFBiz-Users-Application-for-industry-regulator-tp136104p136105.html
then you would probably want separate instances. If you might want to
> Good evening list :)
>
> I am hoping to use Ofbiz as a base for an industry regulator. It
> has the
> following characteristics.
>
> 1. There are 100 member companies. 80 of these are unique whilst the
> others are 'branches' of other members. These are nearly all importer
> organisations.
> 2. The requirement is to allow 'members' to add product and company
> information for the production of a 'catalog'. Historically this
> catalog
> has been printed out once a year and sent to members. It is more a
> list
> of members information than a list of product information but they
> would
> like to include some of this information in the printed catalog and
> allow
> access to the other information through the website.
> 3. Access to this information would be via subscription (I think that
> this might work in the same way as the subscription service to
> access the
> Ofbiz docs) which is all the 'ecommerce' portion of the site would
> sell
> (i.e. it would not sell the products from all the different
> companies).
> 4. It is possible, although is not an initial requirement, that the
> member companies might employ other functional business modules of
> Ofbiz.
> 5. Although many of these companies source unique items, there are a
> number of products that are shared amongst member stores. In
> addition to
> this, items are traded between stores. In some cases the suppliers of
> these stores have inventory that they would like displayed (and
> will pay
> for this).
>
> I am aware that support for Multi-companies in Ofbiz is not
> supported out
> of the box and I agree with this position.
>
> Is Ofbiz the correct choice for this deployment? I have run Ofbiz
> for a
> couple of small orgs in single company mode for some time but am
> having
> some problems working out the implications. There seem to be several
> options that I could adopt. I would like to get the opinions of
> those on
> the list before starting.
>
> The options that I see are:
> 1. Use multiple instances of Ofbiz, one for each company, draw the
> company contact information as well as any product information from
> separate databases (probably going in 'above' Ofbiz). Allow the
> proprietors of the stores to maintain their own information (there
> is a
> definite UI implication here).
> 2. Use multiple instances of Ofbiz, one for each company, but
> store only
> company information in this. Have another instance - 'Industry
> Regulator'
> which contains the product information. In the future populate the
> websites of the companies with products drawn from the 'Regulator'
> instance (probably using WS). Give each 'proprietor' access to
> their own
> products and maybe separate these using categories. Advantage is that
> products are centralised making reporting easier. Disadvantage is
> that
> this seems a complex method of doing it and would require careful
> analysis
> of the 'roles' allocated to proprietors (this is probably unavoidable
> though). In this case the actual company specific instances could be
> gradually made available by module as the subscription model is
> developed
> (e.g. For the lowest level of subs you would just be able to add
> people to
> your system through the 'Party Manager' thereby giving them the
> ability to
> add/modify/delete product info in the main instance whilst a higher
> level
> might give you a trading site etc.,). There remains issues with
> the UI as
> NONE of these proprietors will be happy with conf file
> maintenance. I am
> happy to do this for three instances but 100? This may cause
> maintenance
> problems.
> 3. Store the company details in a separate database and manage
> everything
> through one 'Regulator' instance. This would have the advantage of
> being
> very simple but wouldn't be able to exploit the other elements of the
> system unless we made a large number of mods which would, inevitably,
> permanently fork our setup - something I am not keen to do as we lack
> resource to support this even in the medium term.
>
> Writing this has been useful. I am now favouring number two but would
> value other opinions and comment. I will be happy to provide further
> information on our setup if this would be considered helpful.
>
> Thanks and very best wishes
>
> Ian
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
>
[hidden email]
>
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users>