Posted by
Anders Hessellund on
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/requirements-for-an-OFBiz-IDE-tp143148p143150.html
Hi Torsten,
> Would you be looking at building one? Are you thinking of Eclipse as the
> framework for that as well? (I understand SAP NetWeaver is based on
> Eclipse, isn't it?)
I am currently doing research on how to improve the development experience
for enterprise systems such as Navision, Axapta and SAP. OFBiz is
interesting in that respect since it is open source and supported by a
large and enthusiastic community. I was actually considering prototyping a
small eclipse plugin for OFBiz. In order to do that, though, I need some
realistic requirements from the OFBiz community. I am not sure that the
requirements that I bring from looking at the commercial counterparts are
relevant here.
> Now the interesting question would be: Would an IDE be used only by the
> groups 1-3 or by group 4 as well?
I agree that end-users should also be taken into account when discussing
tool support. Nevertheless, I believe that offering tool support for group
1-2 and especially group 3 is most interesting. In the commercial tools
that I have been looking at, the support for group 3 (often partners and
3rd party customizers) is extremely weak. It would really add value if one
could come up with relevant tool support for the customization process.
Hence my request for a list of requirements ;)
> Nevertheless, this triggers the question wether an IDE should be
> something that lives on someone's PC (as Eclipse would) or if all the
> nice new web technologies (AJAX and the like) are mature enough in the
> meanwhile to provide customizing through a web interface.
I am not sure I think this is very important. Whether tool support is
offered as a desktop app or in an AJAX-powered webapp, the business
requirements should still be the focal point.
-- Anders
> Hi Anders,
>
> > I've been doing a little reading of previous posts in this forum in
> > order to determine the requirements for a specialized OFBiz IDE
> > (similar to NetWeaver for SAP).
>
> Would you be looking at building one? Are you thinking of Eclipse as the
> framework for that as well? (I understand SAP NetWeaver is based on
> Eclipse, isn't it?)
>
> > However, as I see it, there are three main
> > user groups in the OFBiz community: 1) framework developers, 2)
> > application developers, and 3) application "customizers".
>
> I would add a forth group here:
>
> End-users of the application.
>
> Believe it or not, but this is ultimately all about "normal" (= non-IT)
> people who sit in front of OFBiz and get real work done that makes the
> company that's USING (not developing, not consulting, not training) a
> particular OFBiz installation some bucks. I think this aspect often
> get's lost in discussions.
>
> Now the interesting question would be: Would an IDE be used only by the
> groups 1-3 or by group 4 as well?
>
> My initial feeling was that probably some kind of IDE would be something
> for "us, the IT people" and should not be of any interest to business
> users. But after giving this some more thought, I am not sure I would
> stick with that view.
>
> I think that customizing work can be done by both IT people as well as
> business users, depending on complexity. If you think of customizing the
> layout of an invoice or a report for example, this is definitely
> someting a user would want to do. But of course, there are aspects to
> customizing that would be beyong the scope of a non-programmer.
>
> Nevertheless, this triggers the question wether an IDE should be
> something that lives on someone's PC (as Eclipse would) or if all the
> nice new web technologies (AJAX and the like) are mature enough in the
> meanwhile to provide customizing through a web interface.
>
> Regards,
> Torsten
>
>
> Anders Hessellund schrieb:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've been doing a little reading of previous posts in this forum in
>> order
>> to determine the requirements for a specialized OFBiz IDE (similar to
>> NetWeaver for SAP). Since I am still new to this community, my
>> observations might be wrong. However, as I see it, there are three main
>> user groups in the OFBiz community: 1) framework developers, 2)
>> application developers, and 3) application "customizers". The last group
>> is probably the largest, because the typical use case of OFBiz seems to
>> be
>> to download, customize and deploy the standard OFBiz distribution. The
>> two
>> first groups seems to have a significant overlap since application
>> development provides feature requests for the framework development.
>>
>> I would appreciate some feedback on concrete tool requirements for the
>> three groups:
>>
>> 1) framework developers
>> - e.g., better profiling and performance measurements of base
>> components
>> 2) application developers
>> - e.g., better editors for different artifacts, analysis tools to
>> ensure consistency among XML files (such as checking whether a
>> referenced entity in a minilang file actually exists), navigation
>> tools, generators for boilerplate code (similar to Neogia)
>> 3) application "customizers"
>> - e.g., visual editors for frontend customization, easy
>> configuration,
>> simple mapping from user requirements to actual ofbiz components
>>
>> Please contribute to this list, if you have any ideas.
>>
>> -- Anders
>