developing with ofbiz

[Christopher Snow <sn...@coralms.com>]

I feel like I'm getting over the learning curve with ofbiz.  It's very
powerful and productive!  

However, I'm now confused that if it's so quick to develop, why does the
application/functionality seem to grow quite slowly?  Are most
developers spending their time on improving the framework and not
improving the bundled apps?

Many thanks,

Chris

Re: developing with ofbiz

["David E. Jones" <jo...@hotwaxmedia.com>]

Chris,

I saw Chris Howe's answer and hopefully that starts to shed some  
light on the way things work.

To supplement that, and backing up a little bit, there are two main  
dynamics that have an effect on this:

1. the inherent complexity of business processes, data structures,  
and variability between industries and companies
2. the nature of a community-driven open source project

We can do, and have done, a lot with the OFBiz framework to simplify  
the technical side of business application development and to make  
the implementation artifacts closer to the results of analysis and  
design efforts.

That part of things is necessary for anything like OFBiz to have a  
chance at survival. With no corporate backing or investment  
everything that comes into OFBiz is contributed, and usually from  
individuals or very small businesses. The only way these entities can  
typically contribute is by leveraging OFBiz for client needs, and  
then when those needs go beyond what OFBiz offers to try to implement  
things in such a way that they can be added to the open source project.

With OFBiz it has been this way for the last 6 years, and it will  
always be this way. No one on the PMC (project management committee)  
has sufficient resources to fund major development efforts, so the  
community and project growth is structured according to what people  
can do and when they can do it. There just isn't an easy way around  
that.

If we were creating something simple, or something where the whole  
world agreed on one way of doing things it would be a lot easier, but  
that just isn't the nature of modern business. To make things more  
interesting, most users of OFBiz do a lot of customization that is  
specific to their business. The need for that is why they choose  
OFBiz in the first place. However, that also means that much of the  
effort goes into that and not back into OFBiz. In that way it is VERY  
different from many infrastructure level open source projects, even  
the community driven ones.

My take on it is rather different. Most of the business level  
functionality has been developed in the last 2.5 years, an I think  
what has been done in that time is nothing short of amazing,  
especially when the fact is the resources invested are probably just  
a few percent of what goes into development of a traditional  
commercial enterprise suite. That means that OFBiz has seen various  
millions of dollars of effort contributed to it over the years, but  
that doesn't compare to the hundreds of millions that go into major  
commercial systems.

-David


On Feb 6, 2007, at 10:05 AM, Christopher Snow wrote:

> I feel like I'm getting over the learning curve with ofbiz.  It's very
> powerful and productive!
>
> However, I'm now confused that if it's so quick to develop, why  
> does the
> application/functionality seem to grow quite slowly?  Are most
> developers spending their time on improving the framework and not
> improving the bundled apps?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Chris

Re: developing with ofbiz

[Chris Howe <cj...@yahoo.com>]

In regards to OFBiz + Asterisk... Aside from sending email attachments
to the Asterisk fax server and absent someone else contributing their
brains to the effort, I'm done with what my current needs are (Click to
Dial) and wasn't planning on adding to it in the near term .  

There's certainly some nice things that can be done to log phone calls
and faxes as communication events, but I don't have a pressing need to
do that and in fact that would get some of the older fellas around here
looking for their tinfoil hat.  Asterisk already logs this stuff pretty
well and I don't have to tell anyone what I know, because they will
never touch that box :-) "Linux is scary"


--- Jonathon -- Improov <jo...@improov.com> wrote:

> Christopher,
> 
>  > The bundled apps, I believe, are meant to simply be displays of
> feature
>  > functionality.  Since every business is different and all of the
> features
>  > taken together are usually too burdensome for a company to
> actually use, most
>  > are creating custom applications based on those features based on
> the
>  > specific requirements of a deployment.
> 
> Chris is right about that.
> 
>  > As far as "slow development", new feature sets are added
> cautiously to avoid
>  > breaking custom applications that are depending on the feature
> set.
> 
> Development is going carefully enough now. Not as careful as I'm
> comfortable with, though, so 
> development really is going ahead quite rapidly far as I can tell.
> 
> If you're talking about the OFBiz framework (core), I'd say it's very
> stable and solid, and that 
> might explain why there's no rapid progress on that front (not much
> room for improvement).
> 
> If you're ralking about the ERP aspect (non-core) of OFBiz, it's
> pretty rapid. Might even be too 
> rapid for your taste! It's usually rapid along the lines where
> somebody needs specific features 
> for their work, not necessarily along MY own lines. :)
> 
> If you want rapid progress for what you need, you'll probably have to
> contribute those needed 
> features yourself.
> 
> That said, I must say that I'm benefiting from many core features
> added by other contributors. For 
> eg, I'm eagerly awaiting full integration results from Chris Howe for
> OFBiz + Asterisk!
> 
> Jonathon
> 
> Chris Howe wrote:
> > The bundled apps, I believe, are meant to simply be displays of
> feature
> > functionality.  Since every business is different and all of the
> > features taken together are usually too burdensome for a company to
> > actually use, most are creating custom applications based on those
> > features based on the specific requirements of a deployment. 
> > 
> > As far as "slow development", new feature sets are added cautiously
> to
> > avoid breaking custom applications that are depending on the
> feature
> > set.
> > 
> > If you'd expect things to go faster, what functionality do you see
> > being neglected?
> > 
> > --- Christopher Snow <sn...@coralms.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> I feel like I'm getting over the learning curve with ofbiz.  It's
> >> very
> >> powerful and productive!  
> >>
> >> However, I'm now confused that if it's so quick to develop, why
> does
> >> the
> >> application/functionality seem to grow quite slowly?  Are most
> >> developers spending their time on improving the framework and not
> >> improving the bundled apps?
> >>
> >> Many thanks,
> >>
> >> Chris
> >>
> > 
> > 
> 
> 

Re: developing with ofbiz

[Jonathon -- Improov <jo...@improov.com>]

Christopher,

 > The bundled apps, I believe, are meant to simply be displays of feature
 > functionality.  Since every business is different and all of the features
 > taken together are usually too burdensome for a company to actually use, most
 > are creating custom applications based on those features based on the
 > specific requirements of a deployment.

Chris is right about that.

 > As far as "slow development", new feature sets are added cautiously to avoid
 > breaking custom applications that are depending on the feature set.

Development is going carefully enough now. Not as careful as I'm comfortable with, though, so 
development really is going ahead quite rapidly far as I can tell.

If you're talking about the OFBiz framework (core), I'd say it's very stable and solid, and that 
might explain why there's no rapid progress on that front (not much room for improvement).

If you're ralking about the ERP aspect (non-core) of OFBiz, it's pretty rapid. Might even be too 
rapid for your taste! It's usually rapid along the lines where somebody needs specific features 
for their work, not necessarily along MY own lines. :)

If you want rapid progress for what you need, you'll probably have to contribute those needed 
features yourself.

That said, I must say that I'm benefiting from many core features added by other contributors. For 
eg, I'm eagerly awaiting full integration results from Chris Howe for OFBiz + Asterisk!

Jonathon

Chris Howe wrote:
> The bundled apps, I believe, are meant to simply be displays of feature
> functionality.  Since every business is different and all of the
> features taken together are usually too burdensome for a company to
> actually use, most are creating custom applications based on those
> features based on the specific requirements of a deployment. 
> 
> As far as "slow development", new feature sets are added cautiously to
> avoid breaking custom applications that are depending on the feature
> set.
> 
> If you'd expect things to go faster, what functionality do you see
> being neglected?
> 
> --- Christopher Snow <sn...@coralms.com> wrote:
> 
>> I feel like I'm getting over the learning curve with ofbiz.  It's
>> very
>> powerful and productive!  
>>
>> However, I'm now confused that if it's so quick to develop, why does
>> the
>> application/functionality seem to grow quite slowly?  Are most
>> developers spending their time on improving the framework and not
>> improving the bundled apps?
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Chris
>>
> 
> 

Re: developing with ofbiz

["David E. Jones" <jo...@hotwaxmedia.com>]

On Feb 6, 2007, at 1:54 PM, Christopher Snow wrote:

> I would like to see the functionality extended to include business  
> management tools, such as requirements management, project and  
> portfolio management, risk issue and change control management,  
> infrastructure management, etc. - perhaps that's stuff that I could  
> contribute!

You might be surprised at how much of that already exists...

-David

Re: developing with ofbiz

[Christopher Snow <sn...@coralms.com>]

Allow I have known about ofbiz for several years, I always perceived  
it as an ERP application (similar to Compiere).   It was only  
recently that I realized it is more of an ERP application development  
framework.

I would like to see the functionality extended to include business  
management tools, such as requirements management, project and  
portfolio management, risk issue and change control management,  
infrastructure management, etc. - perhaps that's stuff that I could  
contribute!


On 6 Feb 2007, at 17:21, Chris Howe wrote:

> The bundled apps, I believe, are meant to simply be displays of  
> feature
> functionality.  Since every business is different and all of the
> features taken together are usually too burdensome for a company to
> actually use, most are creating custom applications based on those
> features based on the specific requirements of a deployment.
>
> As far as "slow development", new feature sets are added cautiously to
> avoid breaking custom applications that are depending on the feature
> set.
>
> If you'd expect things to go faster, what functionality do you see
> being neglected?
>
> --- Christopher Snow <sn...@coralms.com> wrote:
>
>> I feel like I'm getting over the learning curve with ofbiz.  It's
>> very
>> powerful and productive!
>>
>> However, I'm now confused that if it's so quick to develop, why does
>> the
>> application/functionality seem to grow quite slowly?  Are most
>> developers spending their time on improving the framework and not
>> improving the bundled apps?
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Chris
>>
>
>
> -- 
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Re: developing with ofbiz

[Chris Howe <cj...@yahoo.com>]

The bundled apps, I believe, are meant to simply be displays of feature
functionality.  Since every business is different and all of the
features taken together are usually too burdensome for a company to
actually use, most are creating custom applications based on those
features based on the specific requirements of a deployment. 

As far as "slow development", new feature sets are added cautiously to
avoid breaking custom applications that are depending on the feature
set.

If you'd expect things to go faster, what functionality do you see
being neglected?

--- Christopher Snow <sn...@coralms.com> wrote:

> I feel like I'm getting over the learning curve with ofbiz.  It's
> very
> powerful and productive!  
> 
> However, I'm now confused that if it's so quick to develop, why does
> the
> application/functionality seem to grow quite slowly?  Are most
> developers spending their time on improving the framework and not
> improving the bundled apps?
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Chris
>