Posted by
Si Chen-2 on
Jul 07, 2006; 9:15pm
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/importing-data-into-ofbiz-tp169514p169516.html
David,
Yes, the idea was to create something that would be better for some
applications (namely, the one it's built for) than others.
But I'm very curious about this entity-engine-transform-xml. So is
this idea to paste a big block of XML into <entity-engine-transform-
xml> file and then write the .FTL to do the transformation? And then
run xml import on that file?
And what about the freemarker template? Does it fall under their
"Declarative XML Processing" documentation here: http://
freemarker.org/docs/xgui_declarative.html I looked at it briefly and
recognized some of syntax.
Si
On Jul 7, 2006, at 12:03 PM, David E. Jones wrote:
>
> Stepping back a bit and looking at this conceptually:
>
> What you are proposing would be an import format that would work
> well for a certain piece of software that the data is coming from.
>
> In fact, the normalized data model of OFBiz is far easier to
> transform data to than a more normalized form would be.
>
> Consider Software A and Software B that both have very
> functionality specific, redundant, and generally non-normalized
> data models. The cardinality of fields relative to a product may be
> different, and incompatible, and they may treat similar information
> in very different ways. Because the OFBiz model is more flexible it
> may be possible to migrate A->OFBiz and B->OFBiz but it may not be
> possible to migrate A->B or B->A.
>
> So, yes, something is needed to transform incoming data but trying
> to create something that is less normalized will just make it
> easier for some systems (those that are close to it) and far more
> difficult for other systems (that have more conceptual mismatches
> with it).
>
> This is basically the unavoidable law of de-normalization.
>
> As far as tools and such go, FreeMarker is actually a pretty good
> XML transformation tool. The Entity Engine import stuff does
> already support using FTL files along with an incoming XML file to
> pre-transform the data. There is an example in the ofbiz/
> applications/ecommerce/data/DemoContent.xml file. Notice the root
> element is "entity-engine-transform-xml" instead of "entity-engine-
> xml".
>
> -David
>
>
> Si Chen wrote:
>> Hi everybody. I've been thinking about importing data into
>> ofbiz. One of the issues is that we have a highly normalized data
>> model which would require extensive mapping from external
>> systems. Nevertheless, I think it is possible to create some
>> standard "template" entities for importing data and thus create a
>> standard practice and, eventually, standard tools for doing it.
>> Here's what I'm thinking, given in the context of importing
>> product data:
>> 1. Create a standard non-normalized "holding" entity which
>> contains productId, quantity on hand, available to promise,
>> average cost, reorder point. Note that none of these are linked
>> to any entity in ofbiz.
>> 2. Add a timestamp fields to identify when the data was loaded
>> into the "holding" entity and when it was imported into ofbiz.
>> 3. Write a standard datafile xml import template which
>> corresponds to this "holding" entity.
>> 4. Write some processing script or service which takes new data
>> from the holding entity and insert it into ofbiz. For example, in
>> this case it would be to create InventoryItem, ProductAverageCost,
>> and maybe some AcctgTrans (maybe . . .)
>> It may be most efficient to write these holding entities
>> corresponding to popular software programs where people might want
>> to import data from, so they can mirror those programs' data
>> layout more easily.
>> Si