Re: [OFBiz] Users - questions and suggestions

Posted by David E. Jones on Nov 29, 2005; 1:12am
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/OFBiz-Users-questions-and-suggestions-tp136582p136586.html


Thanks for the comments Adrian, this is exactly where we are going  
with OFBiz right now. As I mentioned in a related email yesterday as  
the project grows and has a more complete horizontal basis it would  
be nice to add more of these task specific UIs, especially as we get  
more feedback about the specific things that people are developing.

-David


On Nov 26, 2005, at 9:55 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:

> David,
>
> I am using OFBiz for the company I work for. Like you, I found the  
> user interface too complicated for most of the employees here, and  
> it wasn't really task-centric. That is by design by the way - the  
> interface shipped with OFBiz is (in my opinion) a generic  
> presentation layer that is intended to expose all of the  
> framework's capabilities.
>
> The approach we took here was to design our own user interface -  
> built upon the excellent framework that OFBiz supplies. The default  
> UI was used as a guide to design our own task-centric data entry  
> screens. It took a little over six months to come up with a  
> strategy that is easily duplicated to generate new pages and tasks.
>
> Re: Compiere - that OS project had one attribute that turned me  
> away: it is database-centric. There is a lot of SQL built into the  
> source code. That SQL may not port to all databases. On the other  
> hand, OFBiz is database AND operating system agnostic - it will run  
> on just about any database and operating system. With that it mind  
> - it also scales well. Do you need to support tens of thousands of  
> simultaneous users? No problem! You can run OFBiz on a mainframe,  
> or better yet, outsource it to a sophisticated hosting company.
>
> -Adrian
>
>
> David Welton wrote:
>>> It's always nice to get some feedback like this, Si has been working
>>> hard on making OFBiz more palatable to the movers and shakers,  
>>> and I'm
>>> sure he'll read your comments with interest.
>>> We have some plans on the look and feel front, but bear in mind  
>>> OFBiz is
>>> growing rapidly, so it isn't high on the agenda at the moment.
>> Part of it is probably just a graphical touch up by someone who is
>> good with that sort of thing.  That's not really a big deal, I think.
>> Of more concern is managing the complexity presented to users of the
>> system.  It's a tough problem, and perhaps one that is simply not
>> possible to deal with in a generic way.  A lot of google's
>> applications (gmail, for instance) are a good example of the  
>> direction
>> that good applications will go in, I think.  Gmail is easy enough my
>> mom can use it despite being new to computers, and yet it's not
>> limiting for me (it's the first web mail system that doesn't drive me
>> buggy, infact).
>>> David (E. Jones) and I were recently in contact with a large  
>>> client who
>>> was asking some of the same questions you are, one of the emails  
>>> with a
>>> lot of the info you're looking for is attached below. It doesn't  
>>> answer
>>> your specific question, but will give you a good idea of what to  
>>> expect.
>> Thanks!
>>> OFBiz has pretty good granular security control, so it is  
>>> possible to
>>> limit user access both at the application level and the
>>> application/feature level. So you don't need to overwhelm users  
>>> with a
>>> sea of irrelevant features. See the ltdadmin user account for a very
>>> simple example of this.
>> Cool.  I think all the pieces are probably there, it's just a matter
>> of how much time it takes to put them together.  The 'competition' in
>> my case is the internal system that's been put together a mix of
>> things that isn't pretty to look at but does work.
>>> I hope this helps you a little.
>> It's useful, yes, thanks for your prompt reply!
>> Our situation is most likely not a huge load of concurrent users
>> (although it's good to see that this scales linearly), as right now
>> we're doing tens of thousands of web site hits a day, but a huge
>> quantity of products for sale in the DB.  Luckily for now we don't
>> have to worry about stocking a very large portion of those  
>> physically.
>>  We'll probably keep the web front-end we have now as it works pretty
>> well for our products, and is mostly statically
>> One other question - ofbiz does have a community, and people using it
>> for their businesses.  So it's good design built on working code that
>> does something pretty complex.  Yet it doesn't strike me as being
>> visible in the open source world... I'd heard of compiere even though
>> it was a subject that didn't interest me prior to this job, but ofbiz
>> was something I discovered only when I went hunting for it.  Any
>> thoughts on that?
>> Thanks again,
>> --
>> David N. Welton
>>  - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
>> Apache, Linux, Tcl Consulting
>>  - http://www.dedasys.com/
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