Current methodology of having the externalId field in the various tables is limiting the capabilities of OFBiz. With this an object can have only 1 externalId value. However, it is quite feasible that an object can be associated with various external systems with each having a different externalId value. This is particularly true for the party entity.
I wonder whether this is necessary for a facility. If a supplier has an Id value for one of the internally used facilities, why would the adopter care? Similar thoughts are on contact mech and shipment. But a good example and explanation for each may help. The external Id of a product is (as far as it is related to a product supplied by a 3rd party) captured in SupplierProduct entity. If the intent is to capture the product Id as it is used by a customer and other parties, then the same reasoning as used for parties (see above) applies. Why would an OFBiz adopter care what the external Ids of downstream parties are? The identification type SKU can't be used for this purpose, as it is intended to have a value based on internally used variation/feature combinations. I suggest reading up on [1]. The definitions used by either supplier, customer, etc. may lead to conflicts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_keeping_unit Best regards, Pierre Smits *Apache Trafodion <https://trafodion.apache.org>, Vice President* *Apache Directory <https://directory.apache.org>, PMC Member* Apache Incubator <https://incubator.apache.org>, committer *Apache OFBiz <https://ofbiz.apache.org>, contributor (without privileges) since 2008* Apache Steve <https://steve.apache.org>, committer On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 1:44 PM Suraj Khurana <suraj.khur...@hotwax.co> wrote: > Hello team, > > As far as my understanding, externalId in OrderHeader is used to save > orderId reference of any other system into our system. > > If this is the only case, we should also maintain something similar on > following entities as well as consistency and they will be in need in case > of a full-fledged integration with OFBiz environment with any other system: > > 1. ReturnHeader > 2. ContactMech > 3. Party (already exist) > 4. Facility > 5. Product (can be discussed, Identification type SKU can also do the > job) > > Please let me know your thoughts on this. > > -- > Best Regards, > Suraj Khurana > Technical Consultant >
