On Jan 22, 2008, at 8:41 AM, Ahmad Khalifa wrote:
J Aaron Farr wrote:
Ahmad Khalifa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Ultimately, what this would be good for, is to offer several
pre-built applications along the lines of CRM, ERP, Accounting, POS,
etc... just like some already available applications, but the extra
customization features would make it much more adaptable/
extendable to
organizations, and much easier to extend to more business domains.
I understand it's technically different from OFBiz, but have you
looked at Apache OFBiz? Would it be something that team could use?
http://ofbiz.apache.org/
I have taken a look at OFBiz. From what I understand in OFBiz you
create
your entities, views, db table mappings, and business logic in Java,
and
XML.
This approach is much different. It defines those things in the
database
and interprets them at runtime from the database. i.e. there is no
such
thing as 'Accounts.xml' or 'Employees.java', etc...
I don't see OFBiz benefiting from this at all. Unless they're
willing to
do a huge re-write. On the other hand, what this project could use
from
the OFBiz project, is the already developed logic they have. It is
much
more mature in terms of the already created business functionality.
Being one of the architects of the OFBiz Framework I'm obviously
biased toward that approach in general. It sounds like it would share
some of the same ideals, like working with higher level artifacts and
avoiding code generation. OFBiz is definitely XML-heavy (intentionally
for now... ie until a better alternative surfaces), and has touch
points all over the place to use lower level tools like Java classes/
methods and templating tools.
The idea of putting all business level stuff in the database is
interesting, but I'm still a skeptic. You can certainly build revision
control around it, but how do you get the same combination of off-line
and remote work along with team collaboration and group effort
synchronization? I guess you could build that too, ie some sort of
database sync/merge. I have never done this formally, but based on
discussions and informal cost/benefit comparison... well... I guess it
is enough to say that I'm still a skeptic. ;)
There are various commercial vendors doing this sort of thing. Most
are aimed at having doing infrastructure for a centralized ASP-style
environment, ie where there is one big application and people build or
extend apps through web-based interfaces and everything lives on the
server. The ultimate in lock-in, and an nice enabler of over-
centralization (which I think most open source proponents realize the
danger and downside of...). That's a good motivation for database
driven business data structures, logic, screens, etc.
Anyway, the two commercial companies that come to mind who are doing
things this way are Tenfold Software and Bungee Labs.
BTW, Compiere actually works more or less this way. Ie, things are
heavily database-driven.
If you get to the point where you start looking at data modeling and
the logic tier stuff, feel free to collaborate with us at OFBiz. More
eyes on this stuff is always a good thing! Okay, well 98% of the
time. ;)
-David
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
