On 1/10/2012, at 7:14 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: > I mentioned this once before as part of another discussion, but I'm creating > a new discussion so it can receive the attention it deserves. > > The Data Model Resource Book describes entity subtypes. OFBiz implements > entity subtypes by adding a field to the supertype that points to a *Type > entity that contains valid subtypes. > > The problem is users (and some developers) do not understand that pattern, > and they add invalid subtypes to the *Type entity. That can cause things to > break. As an example, I have a client who created additional ProductTypes > (that actually represented product categories) and used those added > ProductTypes for their products. Then they were puzzled why their order > fulfillment process stopped working. >
To be honest I don't think this is a good reason to change anything. A basic and fundamental misunderstanding of the data model isn't a reason to drive change in anything except perhaps better documentation. *Type entities also provide some flexibility by allowing additional fields to be used to describe common behavior of various types such as ProductType's isDigital and isPhysical, personally this is a feature of the design that I'd like to see put into greater use. An example of that might be having a defaultDataResourceTypeId or defaultMimeTypeId on ProductContentType so that the most appropriate form for the given ProductContentType can be displayed, currently that sort of thing is hardcoded into a groovy script if I recall correctly. Perhaps in the future strong use of those fields could lay a better foundation for allowing user's to create their own types simply by indicating the desired behaviors. Regards Scott
