On Wednesday 29 September 2004 08:58, Lanman wrote: > I really hate it when you do that! Just when I thought I had found a > challenging intellectual adversary, you go and agree with me on > something! Damn! Where's Albert Einstein when ya need him? *Snicker*!
I like to keep my opponents off-guard and not get too predictable. ;-} > I suppose that now, you're gonna tell me that I can't bill you for the > new keyboard, aren't ya? Grin! Good thing it's a tax write-off for me. > > What I'm not "getting" from OGO, is the reasons why they felt it > necessary to use a module (mod_ngobjweb.so) to handle the pages when > most others use a web-page built using PHP. It just seems that they over > complicated the construction of the suite. I suppose they had their > reasons, but I'm not getting that quite yet. IMNSHO, it wasn't done in > order to make the suite easier in most senses of the word, but perhaps > it had something to do with an easier building of the suite. Well, we again seem to have come to some of the same conclusions. I did note that the packaging and even the product appears to be extremely modular as if by design. My own take on that was that they had VERY big plans for the product, sort of an everything but the kitchen sink kind of deal and were building that modular architecture in, related to those plans. Given the existing scope, I don't see the need currently but then again, there are a lot of other smaller more compact packages already that would be just as useable so they are perhaps planning to move in another direction and are planning ahead. It is much harder to make an existing product more modular than it is to build that capacity in from the beginning design. On a personal level, I don't like products that are too broad in scope, even if the supposition is that you want everything integrated. If you try to do too many things, usually you do none of them really well. Several reasons for my dislike, first, overly complex packages are harder from a QA perspective and thus prone to more problems. Second, trying to customize such a package is also more difficult and I don't know of very many businesses that are happy with an out of the box, vanilla product. Third, upgrades, patches, fixes are more complex and have to be tested broader and deeper because of the many layers of complexity and integration points. The modular architecture can help with this somewhat but tends to also mean that you need to build up complex skill sets in house to provide support and customization since you usually won't get that from the company (more true for commercial than OS but tends to match for all of them). And, the more modular nature also tends to detract from overall knowledge of the big picture of the package so that it is harder to tell where everything intersects and what changes in one module will affect other modules. > Since OGO seems to be based on components from other groupware suites, > it seems that they must have taken a turn somewhere that led them down a > new path of construction, and this might be a factor. Most other ones > I've looked at didn't give me SOPE hassles, and it wasn't necessary to > build a module in order to get it working. If their focus is on integration of disparate components, especially from an enterprise level, this would explain a lot. I note that packages like SAP are extremely complex and in most cases, require virtual armies dedicated to their installation and configuration due to the many modules that can be attached to them. If their package is focused at the same functional design, but from a communications end, it would explain why the package is so complex and at least some of the apparent design decisions. Something along the lines of tying in a CRM system to enterprise email, and even perhaps hooking that up to some type of ERP type system. Once you start talking about all of these very different types of system being integrated, you would need a pretty complex package with either a lot of integration points or a very modular type of design. -- Bryan Phinney
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