http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Users-Looking-at-using-OFBiz-A-few-general-Questions-tp137032p137036.html
familiar with OFBiz. I wish I did--that would make my life a lot easier!
reasonably technically inclined, you'll probably figure it out. If you
David E. Jones wrote:
>
> If you want to do a lot of customization with OFBiz, count on a bit
> of a learning curve. It sounds like you have a basic knowledge of
> Enterprise Java stuff, and that will help as you start getting into
> tools like FTL that are alternatives to more familiar things like
> JSPs (or Velocity and that sort of thing if you have experience there).
>
> With training people usually get an idea of how to use the framework
> after a few days and after a couple of months tend to be pretty
> comfortable and self sufficient with it. Still, the far more
> difficult part is usually the stuff on the applications layer. While
> that can take a long time to get comfortable with, once you
> understand the structure of things you can usually research things
> pretty quickly to find the details you need to reuse and refactor
> things.
>
> If you have good OFBiz experience it is possible to get a site up for
> fairly cheap (we do basic production site setups for as low as
> $1000), but if you are planning on doing a lot of customization
> yourself and don't have experience with these things it may not work
> out too well.
>
> To make things tougher things that are "standard" and should be
> reliable can be incredible tricky to deal with. For example, the fact
> that the 1.5 series JVMs are _not_ backward compatible with the 1.4
> series JVMs is causing a lot of grief in the world of Java. Many of
> these things are API changes and such and are in my opinion not
> totally worth the price of losing backward compatibility. It makes it
> almost impossible to write code in certain areas that works in 1.4
> and 1.5. For an high level project like OFBiz it is a mess because we
> use a lot of other libraries and we can't really move to 1.5 until
> those are all working in 1.5. What is worse is that once we do move
> to 1.5 we may not be able to keep things working in 1.4 without code
> changes or conditional compilations or something. Still, I haven't
> really tried this yet so I'm not sure what will be necessary. This is
> one of the many complications in the Java world that makes this sort
> of software more difficult to work with, and another thing that isn't
> a big deal for those who are familiar with the issue, but for
> everyone else it is a pain and takes time and effort from more
> important things. We try to insulate people from a lot of these sorts
> of issues with helpful default and features in the tools in the
> framework, but there is only so much that can be done...
>
> Still, feedback is appreciated and hopefully at some point in the
> future more resources will be available to make OFBiz easier to use
> out of the box and such. At some points in the past this has
> happened, and it is a LOT easier than it was a couple of years ago,
> but it is difficult because by its very nature the business level
> requirements are so complex (which one often doesn't discover until
> digging into it, and from a technical background it can be a bit of a
> shock, a month to be comfortable with the technical part and often at
> least a year for the business side... though usually you only need a
> very small part of that to function).
>
> -David
>
>
> On Jan 23, 2006, at 11:01 AM, RPT wrote:
>
>> Hi Si,
>>
>> Thanks for the reply, the first document I looked at was 'Getting
>> and Using OFBiz', and yes I know that it does mention needing java
>> 1.4 ...
>> But sadly a lot of us 'newbs' assume that means anything 1.4 or
>> after. And
>> in fact I didn’t even consider the possibility of it being an SDK
>> version
>> problem until I found a Google reference linking the class not found
>> error I
>> was having and the version issue. The other document I read (well
>> skimmed)
>> was 'Basic OFBiz Production Setup' which I believe has no mention of
>> SDK
>> versions at all.
>>
>> Regarding your other comments, yes I realise that OFBiz is in a
>> totally different league to products such as OSCommerce, and I was
>> in no way
>> drawing comparisons (well other than with ease of download, and
>> installation). While the primary purpose of our project will be
>> eCommerce,
>> having the functionality of integrated front and back of house
>> accounting,
>> and the ability to build other app's (such as the ability to remove
>> contact
>> details in emails between suppliers and customers etc) would
>> certainly be
>> useful. But I am still left with my original questions, especially
>> the time
>> commitment necessary and learning curve to even begin to seriously
>> customise
>> this product. I wont repeat what I have already asked/written but
>> if you or
>> any others would like to comment on the other issues I raised in my
>> original
>> post that would be great.
>>
>> Thanks very much again for your reply
>>
>> Cosmic
>> --------------------
>> Robert Peter Taylor.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:
[hidden email] [mailto:users-
>>
[hidden email]]
>> On Behalf Of Si Chen
>> Sent: Tuesday, 24 January 2006 3:17 AM
>> To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion
>> Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Users - Looking at using OFBiz; A few general
>> Questions
>>
>> Robert,
>>
>> You should understand that OSCommerce and OFBiz are fundamentally
>> different
>> products. OSCommerce is a shopping cart for basic online store
>> functionality. OFBiz is a large-scale enterprise application project
>> that
>> can be used for ERP, CRM, warehouse management, manufacturing,
>> supply chain,
>> document management, logistics, etc. OFBiz also comes with an
>> integrated
>> POS, can be deployed across multiple locations, multiple stores, in
>> multiple
>> tax jurisdictions, etc.
>>
>> BTW, which installation help file were you looking through?
>>
>> Si
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> RPT wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> We need to set up a <Snip> (see original post) ....
>>
>>
>>
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