Jonathon I agree with you almost completely. I also think the framework is well documented. Any toon with minimal reading skills and a week can get up to a fair speed. That documentation along with the examples and tutorials are a complete introduction in my view.
The documentation on the ERP stuff though is abysmal. I know there is a nice Data Model resource book, but it is my view that even if I find it well written, many without previous modeling experience will not. When I bought my book, I bought two, one for me and one for the client (with whom I've have a long relationship). The client is very experienced in business and has some programming skills as well. He's had the book now for 4 months and still hasn't got a handle on the schema (I also gave him the schema diagram). Additionally, Ofbiz follows many of the models only loosely with lots of added fields and entities. Even after having read this book twice and used Ofbiz for some 4 months, I still run across fields that I haven't a clue what they are for. In most of my previous work, the project leader knew almost nothing about programming. It was his job to model the business, draw use charts and prototype screens using some handy drawing tool, get it all agreed on with the customer, then hand it off to us grunts to code. It is my view that one person with indepth understanding of Ofbiz ERP is required. That person does not need framework skills although it would be REAL helpful. Then, two programmers who understand the framework at least mostly, and a third screen designer who understood widgets and ftl. That would make a hellofa team. I just spent the day coding some data munching stuff that most any reasonably skilled java programmer could write; no ofbiz experience required. It is therefore my view that only one of the two grunts need to have indepth framework skills so long as they sit close together or can collaborate using some fast means like IM. See, I am already forming this team in my head for the next job:) Skip -----Original Message----- From: Jonathon -- Improov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 7:58 PM To: dev@ofbiz.apache.org Subject: Re: svn commit: r597479 - /ofbiz/trunk/applications/party/entitydef/entitymodel.xml > I still maintain that there is no such thing as too much documentation > (unless it's bad). I'm ok with that. I don't have a war machine behind a banner called "death to redundant documentation". :) I don't have war machines at all. You just gave me an important tip. Is it true that a book on "OFBiz: business application guide" will be more useful than "OFBiz: a framework guide"? The former is incredibly vast. It seems you agreed with the fact that OFBiz projects need at least one OFBiz expert who knows all of OFBiz the business application. May work even if he doesn't know the framework stuff. Jonathon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Jonathon > > I still maintain that there is no such thing as too much documentation > (unless it's bad). I have hundreds of books that refer to regularly so I > don't have to remember details I us only infrequently. > > I initially was going to put a screen designer with me on the current > project to write the widget and ftl code because I don't have the > imagination to be able to know a good UI screen before I see it working and > others with us do. Sadly, that did not work because I spent so much time > hunting down answers to questions like "what does this field do?" that I > couldn't get any work done. > > Such a shame too because these excellent UI designers are typically poor > programmers. > > Skip > > -----Original Message----- > From: Jonathon -- Improov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 3:40 AM > To: dev@ofbiz.apache.org > Subject: Re: svn commit: r597479 - > /ofbiz/trunk/applications/party/entitydef/entitymodel.xml > > > Skip, > > Well, not yet. About 10 months ago, I proudly voiced an ambition to create > enough documentation to > rapidly train a whole bunch of OFBiz-capable developers or engineers. I'm > not there yet. > > Frankly, I don't know if publishing a comprehensive "Guide to OFBiz" will > help or hurt the > project. Actually, I think I don't know much at all. > > We'll see next year if I'm a boon or a bane. Oh well. > > Here, please pardon my terminology again, I don't know how else to say this. > (This has irritated > David before). There are 2 parts to OFBiz. The framework, and the ERP > aspects. The framework is > huge, but is really tiny compared to the ERP aspects in OFBiz that works > OOTB. It should be > possible to have an army of developers who only know the framework aspects > of OFBiz, assign a > single OFBiz expert (who knows *all* of OFBiz), and produce great software. > > Not yet. Not yet... > > Jonathon > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> David >> >> On this knowledge/experience point, I was talking about teams of people. >> You have one (or more) team leader with a full grasp of the concepts and >> others who write code under their direction. I do not think a single > person >> could attempt Ofbiz without a full understanding of the issues. In this >> team environment, the majority of the contributors only need knowledge of >> their specific area. >> >> I would bet a dollar to a donut that this team implementation is happening >> now in many instances with some of the members not having a full grasp of >> the business or database aspects. >> >> Skip >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: David E Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 11:47 PM >> To: dev@ofbiz.apache.org >> Subject: Re: svn commit: r597479 - >> /ofbiz/trunk/applications/party/entitydef/entitymodel.xml >> >> >> >> I hope I don't burst any bubbles... but this specific paragraph has a >> couple of real doosies (IMO of course): >> >> >> On Nov 22, 2007, at 10:23 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >>> I was also trying to point out that "obvious" is always relative to >>> experience and education. >> To some extend, yes, but I think you gave examples of where this is >> not the case. The real point of this was the informational content, ie >> the lack of redundancy and other information theory 101 types of >> things (well, that certainly wasn't a 101 class when I took it, but >> this part of it is a basic concept). >> >>> I promise you that over the life of Ofbiz >>> (assuming that it becomes as successful as I think it will), the >>> majority of >>> those who write code for it will have zero business experience and >>> little to >>> no database experience. >> This may very well be the case, of course all such people are welcome >> in the OFBiz world. However (and this might be the big bubble bursting >> part...), if such people think they can contribute over a reasonable >> scope and period of time they will HAVE to learn about such things. >> These are things that are not made up in OFBiz, but rather things in >> the world that OFBiz uses (ie OFBiz is a consumer or carrier of the >> concepts not the producer). >> >> I'm guessing you get this and the above was just a partial thought... >> if so forgive me for taking your thought and walking with it for a bit. >> >> -David >> >> >> > > >
