On Apr 2, 2011, at 5:41 AM, Paul Foxworthy wrote: > Status History > --------------------- > > I can see the sense in having one repository for all change tracking. We > just need to bear in mind there are more use cases for using the information > in the repository than “auditing”. Auditing is a security activity, and it > will be security professionals looking at a history of who did what. Looking > at a status history could well be a business activity with no security > dimension to it. So viewing the history of changes to an order’s status > might be something a manager would do. > > We would need to structure permissions so that people who need some of the > information for business purposes can use it even though they are not > security professionals. The other thing to observe is that status history is > currently *on* by default in Ofbiz, and auditing is *off* by default.
The "audit log" is a pretty general term and does not imply restricted access to the information. Control of access to any database information is up to the application developer, and nothing about the term "audit log" prevents that. > QuantityBreak > --------------------- > > No, don’t get rid of the QuantityBreak entity, and it should be used as part > of pricing. Many organisations will have standard QuantityBreaks that apply > to a wide range of products. An organization might want to offer various > agreed prices to customers, but use the same quantity breaks consistently. > It should be possible to add a new price for a product without having to > define quantity breaks, with the risk that the newly entered quantity breaks > are inconsistent with standard organisation policy. Maybe this wasn't clear... the goal is to get rid of the QuantityBreak entity and use the quantity fields directly. This significantly simplifies both the data model and the code. In theory what you say is correct, that quantity breaks could be maintained separately, but that hasn't happened in any of the OFBiz UIs, and in fact I've never seen anything like that actually used (I've seen them built, but then abandoned because for the user they are cumbersome). If an organization wants a policy of specific quantity breaks they can certainly implement that and design the user interface for it, even with the data model designed this way. > Purchase and Sales Agreements > ----------------------------------------------- > > - the AgreementItem has the currency for prices. The currency should be on > individual AgreementProductAppls. It should be possible to have agreed > prices in various currencies for a product > - AgreementProductAppl should have its own from and thru dates. A particular > price might have a different timespan than the Agreement or (in the case of > a purchase agreement) the SupplierProduct. You could imagine an agreement > spanning a year with a list of special prices, each of which is available > for one month This is a good point, it would be good to have prices in multiple currencies in the same agreement, I'm modifying the AgreementItemProduct entity in the Mantle data model to support that and in general be more like the ProductPrice entity. On second thought, after looking at the model, I like them (currency, from/thru dates) on the AgreementItem better since it can apply to multiple things and agreements may be better organized if price lists for different currencies and date ranges are under different items (and the actual data is a lot cleaner). > - There’s no way at present to have a quantity break associated with an > agreed price for a sales agreement. Quantity breaks are currently within the > SupplierProduct entity, so are available for purchase agreements, but not > sales agreements. Actually, that's not quite true. The current AgreementProductAppl model is cumbersome, but this last point IS supported (ie agreement-based sales pricing with quantity breaks) in both the OFBiz data model and the sales order code. In the data model I'm working on this is simplified and much more clear. See the "AgreementItemProduct" entity here: https://github.com/jonesde/mantle/blob/master/mantle-udm/entity/PartyEntities.xml > SupplierProduct > ----------------------- > > - As David says, a five-attribute primary key is unwieldy. It should be > replaced with a simple ID. Agreed. Here is my current take on the SupplierProduct entity: https://github.com/jonesde/mantle/blob/master/mantle-udm/entity/ProductInventoryEntities.xml > - SupplierProduct has a minimumQuantity attribute, so must be read in > combination with other SupplierProducts. SupplierProduct should *not* have > any information on quantity breaks. There should be just one instance of > SupplierProduct to record that a product can be obtained from a supplier. A > SupplierProduct should have associated QuantityBreaks and ProductPrices, as > described in the Data Model Resource Book. > - lastPrice in SupplierProduct is used both for the last price we obtained > the product, and an agreed price. These are two separate things. Given the > lastPrice might have been determined by an agreement that has expired, and > by a quantity that we are not ordering this time, it's not very useful. It > ought to be possible to determine the most recent prices we paid at various > quantity breaks for a given product from a given supplier Actually in OFBiz the "lastPrice" is meant to be just that, the last known price from the supplier. It isn't meant to represent any sort of purchase agreement. The Agreement* entities should be used for that (though I don't know off the top of my head if that is current supported in the OFBiz purchase order code). > TaxAuthorityRateProduct > ------------------------------------- > > - This entity is used to determine tax on shipping and promotional pricing > adjustments, when these are not products. There should be a separate entity > for tax on all order adjustments, which will determine tax based on the > adjustment type rather than on the product category Yes, agreed. In the Mantle UDM I changed the name to "TaxAuthorityRateSales": https://github.com/jonesde/mantle/blob/master/mantle-udm/entity/AccountingOtherEntities.xml > - The ProductStore is used to determine the tax payable. That’s fine for > sales, but makes no sense for purchases. Really, the ProductStore is a proxy > for the geo of the seller. TaxAuthorityRateProduct should be revised to list > the geo of the seller rather than the ProductStore, then the same rules > could be used by purchases as well as sales. For a sale, the ProductStore > geo would be used as the geo of the seller. I'm not sure what you mean about the geo of the seller thingy. The geo used on TaxAuthorityRateProduct is the taxAuthorityGeoId where the customer is shipping to (or billing to) a geo where there is a PartyTaxAuthInfo (or Mantle TaxAuthorityParty) record where the seller organization has isNexus=Y. As for the productStoreId field, it should only be used as an extra constraint on the "rule" record, and should be fine if null (from the model perspective, the code may not currently behave that way). ======================= Anyway, thanks for your feedback Paul. I've made a few changes while reviewing your comments and related entities and they are now in Mantle UDM. -David > David E Jones-4 wrote: >> >> I'm writing this to start a thread to discuss: >> >> If you could change ANYTHING in the OFBiz data model, what would it be? >> >> To kick this off here are some ideas I've compiled that have come up over >> the years (many based on feedback from people on this mailing list), or >> that I thought of recently will working on this topic. You can see them >> below... >> >> -David >> >> ======================================================== >> >> - Rename *Role entities to *Party >> - Remove *Attribute and *TypeAttr entities (not generally a good practice >> to use) >> - Remove all status history (*Status) and just using audit on the statusId >> field >> - ProductPrice add quantity breaks, change PK to single field sequenced >> - Get rid of QuantityBreak and use the two simple fields instead in each >> place used >> - Get rid of ProdCatalog*, rework it to ProductStoreCategory, ie directly >> associate to the store >> - Change OrderItemShipGrpInvRes to InventoryReservation, change PK to >> single field sequenced >> - Change Quote to be other types of Order >> - Make Return more like Invoice (ie no adjustment, just use items for >> everything) >> - Instead of OrderItemType, OrderAdjustmentType, InvoiceItemType, >> ReturnItemType just use Shared ItemType everywhere >> - PartyRelationship simplify (single sequenced ID) >> >> - Make prefixes consistent (no suffixes), ie toPartyId instead of >> partyIdTo, etc >> - Change all relationships to PartyRole to be type one-nofk; use plain one >> for Party and RoleType >> - Move most *Type entities to Enumeration values (update seed data, >> referring >> entities, remove *Type) (after this remove all remaining hasTable >> fields) >> - Rework PhysicalInventory and InventoryVariance to simplify, reduce >> dependency on InventoryItem >> - Review use of Appl, Assoc (look at book, make sure consistent) >> - Add PartyIdentification entity, get rid of various fields and other >> entities (maybe even PartyTaxAuthority...) >> - Change GoodIdentification to ProductIdentification >> - Combine PartyContactMechPurpose and PartyContactMech (remove, only use >> entity with purpose, name PartyContactMech) >> - Get rid of NoteData, put noteText very-long field directly on various >> *Note entities >> - Review all entities with large PKs (esp 4+ fields) >> - Review and do something with all createOn/By lastUpdateOn/By fields, >> maybe add an auditing flag for the entity instead of just for a field >> - CustRequest to Request >> - FinAccount to FinancialAccount >> - Invoice handle recurrence? (was using RecurrenceInfo) >> - Get rid of optional ProductFeature concept (conf/etc products much >> better model) >> - Instead of various *Term entities and mapping, just use OrderTerm >> everywhere >> - Cleanup/reorg ShipmentCostEstimate, CarrierShipmentMethod, etc, etc >> - Agreement - make price list easier/cleaner >> - Remove all createdDate, createdByUserLogin, lastModifiedDate, >> lastModifiedByUserLogin fields (use framework defaults, audit-log) >> - Product clean up: move dimenstions to new entity, remove content fields, >> etc >> - Trim down big entities like Product, WorkEffort, etc; for groups of >> similar fields use a more normalized structure >> > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Discussion-Potential-Data-Model-Improvements-tp3390620p3422000.html > Sent from the OFBiz - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
