Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Ean Schuessler e...@brainfood.com wrote:
To me the convenience is being able to program to a straight AWT like
interface. It is just so convenient to be able to do things like:
myButton = new Button(Click Me, new Button.ClickListener() {
public void buttonClick(ClickEvent event) {
myLabel.setValue(You clicked my button); // simple stuff like this
dispatcher.runSync(SetPartyRole, [roleTypeId: 'BUTTON_CLICKER']); // or
even things like this
}
});
The process of binding these events to URLs to trigger services and
worrying through AJAX processing just falls away. I could add a dozen
buttons to a page and concentrate on the logic they trigger instead of a
pile of oddly named events and url bindings. Sure there is some memory
overhead there, sure it has state but man does it make some things easier.
I think your answer (as I've illustrated above) makes perfect sense and you
can definitely just trigger a service engine from these other frameworks.
However, I've wondered for a while why we couldn't construct stateful graphs
of UI objects from the XML widget descriptors and have the event bindings
attach directly to the widgets.
There is Declarative Layout in GWT which is similar to what you have
described, but it still requires writing java classes. You can see it here:
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/doc/latest/DevGuideUiBinder.html
Bilgin
- David E Jones wrote:
That's a tough one. I just did some research on Vaadin, and in some ways
it looks similar to Wicket, and I suppose in some ways similar to JSF as
well, though Vaadin appears to be a sort of extension to GWT and the unlike
Wicket where the Java code is mostly run on the server (if I understand
right) in Vaadin most of the Java code is transformed using GWT and run on
the client, turning the client into almost a desktop app that communicates
with the server to mostly pass data around.
How to get any two technologies like these to work together is a good
question, or at least how to get them to work together seamlessly. Say you
want to write part of your app in Vaadin and part of it in Wicket... how
will you get them to work together well? I think the answer is that you
could have them both deployed in the same webapp, and pages written in each
could link to each other, but sharing decoration (except by including the
same text or using a tool to interpret a template that they can both
include) and navigation and such would be a nightmare.
In Moqui, like in OFBiz, most of the web UI stuff is based on writing to
a writer or stream and being able to assemble various pieces of text to
create a single web page. Without getting into lower level code, I looked at
each of these three (Vaadin, JSF, and Wicket) and it does not look like they
have a way to generate text to be included in a web page, and perhaps worse
handling navigation and links is so ingrained in the way the tools are
designed that nothing there could be shared (not in ways that I could find,
though of course with enough creative coding anything could be done in
theory).
So, I guess the answer is that just like with OFBiz, with Moqui Framework
if you want to use one of those web UI frameworks then use that instead of
the Moqui XML Screens/Forms, and just use other parts of the Moqui API
through the ExecutionContext that could be inited/destroyed in an event
listener instead of the MoquiServlet (since the MoquiServlet wouldn't be
used in that case), or if desperate you could use the Moqui class for static
init of the ExecutionContextFactory and ExecutionContext.
That parts easy, ie use Moqui API for services, entities, and other tools
but not for the web UI... trying to merge and share artifacts between these
kinds of restrictive UI approaches would be tough. On the other hand, if you
can get plain text out of them, you can include that in any Moqui XML
Screen.
I don't think a better solution to this exists. Personally, I blame JSP
and their restrictive nature that has been considered acceptable over the
years, and those sorts of restrictions now seem to bleed into all sorts of
web UI frameworks.
--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
e...@brainfood.com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
To me the convenience is being able to program to a straight AWT like
interface. It is just so convenient to be able to do things like:
myButton = new Button(Click Me, new Button.ClickListener() {
public void buttonClick(ClickEvent event) {
myLabel.setValue(You clicked my button); // simple stuff like this
dispatcher.runSync(SetPartyRole, [roleTypeId: 'BUTTON_CLICKER']); // or even
things like this
}
});
The process of binding these events to URLs to trigger services and worrying
through AJAX processing just falls away. I could add a dozen buttons to a page
and concentrate on the logic they trigger instead of a pile of oddly named
events and url bindings. Sure there is some memory overhead there, sure it has
state but man does it make some things easier.
I think your answer (as I've illustrated above) makes perfect sense and you can
definitely just trigger a service engine from these other frameworks. However,
I've wondered for a while why we couldn't construct stateful graphs of UI
objects from the XML widget descriptors and have the event bindings attach
directly to the widgets.
- David E Jones wrote:
That's a tough one. I just did some research on Vaadin, and in some ways it
looks similar to Wicket, and I suppose in some ways similar to JSF as well,
though Vaadin appears to be a sort of extension to GWT and the unlike Wicket
where the Java code is mostly run on the server (if I understand right) in
Vaadin most of the Java code is transformed using GWT and run on the client,
turning the client into almost a desktop app that communicates with the
server to mostly pass data around.
How to get any two technologies like these to work together is a good
question, or at least how to get them to work together seamlessly. Say you
want to write part of your app in Vaadin and part of it in Wicket... how will
you get them to work together well? I think the answer is that you could have
them both deployed in the same webapp, and pages written in each could link
to each other, but sharing decoration (except by including the same text or
using a tool to interpret a template that they can both include) and
navigation and such would be a nightmare.
In Moqui, like in OFBiz, most of the web UI stuff is based on writing to a
writer or stream and being able to assemble various pieces of text to create
a single web page. Without getting into lower level code, I looked at each of
these three (Vaadin, JSF, and Wicket) and it does not look like they have a
way to generate text to be included in a web page, and perhaps worse handling
navigation and links is so ingrained in the way the tools are designed that
nothing there could be shared (not in ways that I could find, though of
course with enough creative coding anything could be done in theory).
So, I guess the answer is that just like with OFBiz, with Moqui Framework if
you want to use one of those web UI frameworks then use that instead of the
Moqui XML Screens/Forms, and just use other parts of the Moqui API through
the ExecutionContext that could be inited/destroyed in an event listener
instead of the MoquiServlet (since the MoquiServlet wouldn't be used in that
case), or if desperate you could use the Moqui class for static init of the
ExecutionContextFactory and ExecutionContext.
That parts easy, ie use Moqui API for services, entities, and other tools but
not for the web UI... trying to merge and share artifacts between these kinds
of restrictive UI approaches would be tough. On the other hand, if you can
get plain text out of them, you can include that in any Moqui XML Screen.
I don't think a better solution to this exists. Personally, I blame JSP and
their restrictive nature that has been considered acceptable over the years,
and those sorts of restrictions now seem to bleed into all sorts of web UI
frameworks.
--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
e...@brainfood.com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Yes, creating an object graph for Vaadin or Wicket should certainly be doable
based on XML definitions of screens and forms. You could even have scriptlets
for additional screen functionality in the platform-specific (or in Moqui
render-mode) element.
And interesting approach for this might be to create a Groovy script based on
the screen/form XML files, much like the Moqui XML Actions template does. That
template just uses FreeMarker Macros to create a script based on the XML (which
makes it easy and computationally cheap to have Groovy expressions and
scriptlets scattered about the XML), and that script is compiled using Groovy
to a class which is cached for use (all at run-time).
This would make an interesting add-on to Moqui, if anyone is interested. I've
added a section on creating add-on components to the Introduction to Moqui
Framework document (http://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/), and there is
now a page on the Moqui site to list add-on components (pretty empty right
now... ;) ) at: http://www.moqui.org/crust.html
One thing I wonder about using the Vaadin/Wicket approach and the OFBiz/Moqui
approach together is how much value it would add to create Vaadin/Wicket
screens from XML screen/form definitions. In other words, would it be easier to
develop Vaadin/Wicket screen using their native Java code directly, or through
an XML screen/form definition? On the other side of the coin, would the
resulting UI for XML screens/forms be better based on Vaadin/Wicket than on
plain old HTML, CSS, and jQuery? Before trying it out it may be hard to tell...
or in other words only by trying it in a few scenarios would make answers to
those questions clear.
-David
On Apr 8, 2011, at 8:39 AM, Ean Schuessler wrote:
To me the convenience is being able to program to a straight AWT like
interface. It is just so convenient to be able to do things like:
myButton = new Button(Click Me, new Button.ClickListener() {
public void buttonClick(ClickEvent event) {
myLabel.setValue(You clicked my button); // simple stuff like this
dispatcher.runSync(SetPartyRole, [roleTypeId: 'BUTTON_CLICKER']); // or
even things like this
}
});
The process of binding these events to URLs to trigger services and worrying
through AJAX processing just falls away. I could add a dozen buttons to a
page and concentrate on the logic they trigger instead of a pile of oddly
named events and url bindings. Sure there is some memory overhead there, sure
it has state but man does it make some things easier.
I think your answer (as I've illustrated above) makes perfect sense and you
can definitely just trigger a service engine from these other frameworks.
However, I've wondered for a while why we couldn't construct stateful graphs
of UI objects from the XML widget descriptors and have the event bindings
attach directly to the widgets.
- David E Jones wrote:
That's a tough one. I just did some research on Vaadin, and in some ways it
looks similar to Wicket, and I suppose in some ways similar to JSF as well,
though Vaadin appears to be a sort of extension to GWT and the unlike Wicket
where the Java code is mostly run on the server (if I understand right) in
Vaadin most of the Java code is transformed using GWT and run on the client,
turning the client into almost a desktop app that communicates with the
server to mostly pass data around.
How to get any two technologies like these to work together is a good
question, or at least how to get them to work together seamlessly. Say you
want to write part of your app in Vaadin and part of it in Wicket... how
will you get them to work together well? I think the answer is that you
could have them both deployed in the same webapp, and pages written in each
could link to each other, but sharing decoration (except by including the
same text or using a tool to interpret a template that they can both
include) and navigation and such would be a nightmare.
In Moqui, like in OFBiz, most of the web UI stuff is based on writing to a
writer or stream and being able to assemble various pieces of text to create
a single web page. Without getting into lower level code, I looked at each
of these three (Vaadin, JSF, and Wicket) and it does not look like they have
a way to generate text to be included in a web page, and perhaps worse
handling navigation and links is so ingrained in the way the tools are
designed that nothing there could be shared (not in ways that I could find,
though of course with enough creative coding anything could be done in
theory).
So, I guess the answer is that just like with OFBiz, with Moqui Framework if
you want to use one of those web UI frameworks then use that instead of the
Moqui XML Screens/Forms, and just use other parts of the Moqui API through
the ExecutionContext that could be inited/destroyed in an event listener
instead of the MoquiServlet (since
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Hi David, As usual you are a fantastically productive guy. Its a little awe inspiring. :-D Have you given any thought as to how different display technologies like Vaadin, JSF or even Wicket could be accommodated in your framework? Playing with Vaadin has shown me how I wish my views were constructed in OFBiz. ~Ean On 04/02/11 01:09, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO e...@brainfood.com 214-720-0700 x 315 Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
That's a tough one. I just did some research on Vaadin, and in some ways it looks similar to Wicket, and I suppose in some ways similar to JSF as well, though Vaadin appears to be a sort of extension to GWT and the unlike Wicket where the Java code is mostly run on the server (if I understand right) in Vaadin most of the Java code is transformed using GWT and run on the client, turning the client into almost a desktop app that communicates with the server to mostly pass data around. How to get any two technologies like these to work together is a good question, or at least how to get them to work together seamlessly. Say you want to write part of your app in Vaadin and part of it in Wicket... how will you get them to work together well? I think the answer is that you could have them both deployed in the same webapp, and pages written in each could link to each other, but sharing decoration (except by including the same text or using a tool to interpret a template that they can both include) and navigation and such would be a nightmare. In Moqui, like in OFBiz, most of the web UI stuff is based on writing to a writer or stream and being able to assemble various pieces of text to create a single web page. Without getting into lower level code, I looked at each of these three (Vaadin, JSF, and Wicket) and it does not look like they have a way to generate text to be included in a web page, and perhaps worse handling navigation and links is so ingrained in the way the tools are designed that nothing there could be shared (not in ways that I could find, though of course with enough creative coding anything could be done in theory). So, I guess the answer is that just like with OFBiz, with Moqui Framework if you want to use one of those web UI frameworks then use that instead of the Moqui XML Screens/Forms, and just use other parts of the Moqui API through the ExecutionContext that could be inited/destroyed in an event listener instead of the MoquiServlet (since the MoquiServlet wouldn't be used in that case), or if desperate you could use the Moqui class for static init of the ExecutionContextFactory and ExecutionContext. That parts easy, ie use Moqui API for services, entities, and other tools but not for the web UI... trying to merge and share artifacts between these kinds of restrictive UI approaches would be tough. On the other hand, if you can get plain text out of them, you can include that in any Moqui XML Screen. I don't think a better solution to this exists. Personally, I blame JSP and their restrictive nature that has been considered acceptable over the years, and those sorts of restrictions now seem to bleed into all sorts of web UI frameworks. -David On Apr 7, 2011, at 10:27 AM, Ean Schuessler wrote: Hi David, As usual you are a fantastically productive guy. Its a little awe inspiring. :-D Have you given any thought as to how different display technologies like Vaadin, JSF or even Wicket could be accommodated in your framework? Playing with Vaadin has shown me how I wish my views were constructed in OFBiz. ~Ean On 04/02/11 01:09, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Hi On Apr 5, 2011, at 9:08 PM, David E Jones wrote: On Apr 4, 2011, at 11:06 PM, Sam Hamilton wrote: Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] Taking a quick look at things I wonder if they are using Groovy to treat .java files as .groovy files. In Moqui the recommendation is to just use Groovy anytime you need a script for a service or other things. Of course, Moqui isn't so Java-centric as it seems like Play is, so runtime reloading during development is more of an inherent part of the framework and recommended tools as opposed to something that has to be added. No. Play uses standard bytecode enhancement to shorten many things up (i.e. autogenerating getters and setters if they are not set), which are bloated in java. Groovy is used as part of the templating language only. The eclipse compiler is used for live compilation on changes in development mode, if the .java file is newer than the .class file. - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] Yes, that is interesting. In OFBiz this is a HUGE problem because there is so much use of the hideous log rethrow pattern which results in the same, or very similar, stack trace being logged half a dozen times. Well, this is simply an implementation issue, you could also screw up any play application that way... - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] I'd like to do this sooner or later with Moqui and list addons or plugins, plus a document about how to create them (I couldn't find a doc like that for Play, maybe I didn't look hard enough). That framework has various means of supporting this right now, but I like the idea of creating a page to list addons/plugins, even if it starts out empty... ;) This is because modules are actually applications themselves (with minor tweaks of course), but if you know how to write a play application, you have all the basics needed for module writing. More generally talking about play: Concepts differ greatly between play and frameworks similar to ofbiz - no xml hell, real objects instead of map-defined entities (also making validation really simple), actually using and understanding HTTP instead of interpreting it as a stupid transport layer (this weakness exists in java since the definition of the servlet spec), completely configurable URLs as entry point to your application, multi node scalability due to true shared nothing architecture. Running tests in your IDE or without restarting your whole system is also pretty nice, when you want to call yourself test driven - any many things more. This should be enough marketing for today... :-) If you have time, you should take a closer look at play. It has pretty clear concepts, some of them being quite radical and thus complex to port into existing frameworks. --Alexander (frustrated ofbiz dev on day, happy play hacker at night, possibly somewhat biased ;-))
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
On Apr 6, 2011, at 12:32 AM, alexander.reel...@lusini.com wrote: Hi On Apr 5, 2011, at 9:08 PM, David E Jones wrote: On Apr 4, 2011, at 11:06 PM, Sam Hamilton wrote: Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] Taking a quick look at things I wonder if they are using Groovy to treat .java files as .groovy files. In Moqui the recommendation is to just use Groovy anytime you need a script for a service or other things. Of course, Moqui isn't so Java-centric as it seems like Play is, so runtime reloading during development is more of an inherent part of the framework and recommended tools as opposed to something that has to be added. No. Play uses standard bytecode enhancement to shorten many things up (i.e. autogenerating getters and setters if they are not set), which are bloated in java. Groovy is used as part of the templating language only. The eclipse compiler is used for live compilation on changes in development mode, if the .java file is newer than the .class file. Interesting. I've never felt the desire to get into direct bytecode morphing, but I suppose there is a lot of fun to be had there. This sounds like a lot of stuff Groovy does (auto getters/setters, etc), but I bet it's a lot faster if it doesn't do the runtime type checking/converting and other Groovy sugar. - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] Yes, that is interesting. In OFBiz this is a HUGE problem because there is so much use of the hideous log rethrow pattern which results in the same, or very similar, stack trace being logged half a dozen times. Well, this is simply an implementation issue, you could also screw up any play application that way... Yes, that is true, and it could certainly be cleaned up in the OFBiz applications and framework. - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] I'd like to do this sooner or later with Moqui and list addons or plugins, plus a document about how to create them (I couldn't find a doc like that for Play, maybe I didn't look hard enough). That framework has various means of supporting this right now, but I like the idea of creating a page to list addons/plugins, even if it starts out empty... ;) This is because modules are actually applications themselves (with minor tweaks of course), but if you know how to write a play application, you have all the basics needed for module writing. More generally talking about play: Concepts differ greatly between play and frameworks similar to ofbiz - no xml hell, real objects instead of map-defined entities (also making validation really simple), actually using and understanding HTTP instead of interpreting it as a stupid transport layer (this weakness exists in java since the definition of the servlet spec), completely configurable URLs as entry point to your application, multi node scalability due to true shared nothing architecture. Running tests in your IDE or without restarting your whole system is also pretty nice, when you want to call yourself test driven - any many things more. This should be enough marketing for today... :-) If you have time, you should take a closer look at play. It has pretty clear concepts, some of them being quite radical and thus complex to port into existing frameworks. --Alexander (frustrated ofbiz dev on day, happy play hacker at night, possibly somewhat biased ;-)) Aside from xml hell and map-ish entities instead of objects, and the occasional use of the servlet session instead of shared nothing, what is it that frustrates you about the OFBiz framework? In other words, what bothers you on a regular basic or makes things slower for you than you'd like, or than you'd anticipated? -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
The portal screens in OFBiz are really just database-driven dynamic screens. In Moqui they are called dynamic screens using the DynamicScreen* entities. While designed, this feature has been tabled for the 1.0 release and will be incorporated in a later release. You can see the entity definitions (commented out) in the ScreenEntities.xml file. -David On Apr 5, 2011, at 11:05 PM, Bruno Busco wrote: Hi David, I downloaded the beta and seen a great work! Looks like we will have soon a very good option to the actual OFBiz framework to think about. BTW, I couldn't find any implementation or plans regarding a portal/portlet feature. Will the moqui framework include this, or what? Regards, Bruno 2011/4/5 David E Jones d...@me.com On Apr 4, 2011, at 11:06 PM, Sam Hamilton wrote: Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] Taking a quick look at things I wonder if they are using Groovy to treat .java files as .groovy files. In Moqui the recommendation is to just use Groovy anytime you need a script for a service or other things. Of course, Moqui isn't so Java-centric as it seems like Play is, so runtime reloading during development is more of an inherent part of the framework and recommended tools as opposed to something that has to be added. - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] Yes, that is interesting. In OFBiz this is a HUGE problem because there is so much use of the hideous log rethrow pattern which results in the same, or very similar, stack trace being logged half a dozen times. One thing I've noticed about the use of Groovy in Moqui is that they do a good job of putting locations of things like scriptlets (including screen actions, etc) in the stack trace. On the other hand, the stack traces are HUGE because of all of the groovy proxy calls and such, and I've thought about writing something to filter those out... just haven't done it yet. I agree trimming out redundant stuff from the stack trace would be helpful, in addition to avoiding the redundant stack traces. - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] I'd like to do this sooner or later with Moqui and list addons or plugins, plus a document about how to create them (I couldn't find a doc like that for Play, maybe I didn't look hard enough). That framework has various means of supporting this right now, but I like the idea of creating a page to list addons/plugins, even if it starts out empty... ;) -David [1] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/overview [2] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/usability#aBetterusabilityisnotjustfornormalpeoplea [3] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/modules#repository Sam On 3 Apr 2011, at 12:57, David E Jones wrote: The Introduction to Moqui Framework document is now ready and available do download through SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/ This document is meant for application developers, ie for the same people who would use Moqui. It is 12 pages with 2 diagrams and should be a quick read, but describes where everything is in the framework and from a high level how to do various things. BTW, feedback on this document and on the framework itself would both be most helpful... -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, David E Jones wrote: That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today):
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Great! Thanks 2011/4/6 David E Jones d...@me.com The portal screens in OFBiz are really just database-driven dynamic screens. In Moqui they are called dynamic screens using the DynamicScreen* entities. While designed, this feature has been tabled for the 1.0 release and will be incorporated in a later release. You can see the entity definitions (commented out) in the ScreenEntities.xml file. -David On Apr 5, 2011, at 11:05 PM, Bruno Busco wrote: Hi David, I downloaded the beta and seen a great work! Looks like we will have soon a very good option to the actual OFBiz framework to think about. BTW, I couldn't find any implementation or plans regarding a portal/portlet feature. Will the moqui framework include this, or what? Regards, Bruno 2011/4/5 David E Jones d...@me.com On Apr 4, 2011, at 11:06 PM, Sam Hamilton wrote: Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] Taking a quick look at things I wonder if they are using Groovy to treat .java files as .groovy files. In Moqui the recommendation is to just use Groovy anytime you need a script for a service or other things. Of course, Moqui isn't so Java-centric as it seems like Play is, so runtime reloading during development is more of an inherent part of the framework and recommended tools as opposed to something that has to be added. - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] Yes, that is interesting. In OFBiz this is a HUGE problem because there is so much use of the hideous log rethrow pattern which results in the same, or very similar, stack trace being logged half a dozen times. One thing I've noticed about the use of Groovy in Moqui is that they do a good job of putting locations of things like scriptlets (including screen actions, etc) in the stack trace. On the other hand, the stack traces are HUGE because of all of the groovy proxy calls and such, and I've thought about writing something to filter those out... just haven't done it yet. I agree trimming out redundant stuff from the stack trace would be helpful, in addition to avoiding the redundant stack traces. - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] I'd like to do this sooner or later with Moqui and list addons or plugins, plus a document about how to create them (I couldn't find a doc like that for Play, maybe I didn't look hard enough). That framework has various means of supporting this right now, but I like the idea of creating a page to list addons/plugins, even if it starts out empty... ;) -David [1] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/overview [2] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/usability#aBetterusabilityisnotjustfornormalpeoplea [3] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/modules#repository Sam On 3 Apr 2011, at 12:57, David E Jones wrote: The Introduction to Moqui Framework document is now ready and available do download through SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/ This document is meant for application developers, ie for the same people who would use Moqui. It is 12 pages with 2 diagrams and should be a quick read, but describes where everything is in the framework and from a high level how to do various things. BTW, feedback on this document and on the framework itself would both be most helpful... -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, David E Jones wrote: That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
On Apr 4, 2011, at 11:06 PM, Sam Hamilton wrote: Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] Taking a quick look at things I wonder if they are using Groovy to treat .java files as .groovy files. In Moqui the recommendation is to just use Groovy anytime you need a script for a service or other things. Of course, Moqui isn't so Java-centric as it seems like Play is, so runtime reloading during development is more of an inherent part of the framework and recommended tools as opposed to something that has to be added. - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] Yes, that is interesting. In OFBiz this is a HUGE problem because there is so much use of the hideous log rethrow pattern which results in the same, or very similar, stack trace being logged half a dozen times. One thing I've noticed about the use of Groovy in Moqui is that they do a good job of putting locations of things like scriptlets (including screen actions, etc) in the stack trace. On the other hand, the stack traces are HUGE because of all of the groovy proxy calls and such, and I've thought about writing something to filter those out... just haven't done it yet. I agree trimming out redundant stuff from the stack trace would be helpful, in addition to avoiding the redundant stack traces. - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] I'd like to do this sooner or later with Moqui and list addons or plugins, plus a document about how to create them (I couldn't find a doc like that for Play, maybe I didn't look hard enough). That framework has various means of supporting this right now, but I like the idea of creating a page to list addons/plugins, even if it starts out empty... ;) -David [1] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/overview [2] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/usability#aBetterusabilityisnotjustfornormalpeoplea [3] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/modules#repository Sam On 3 Apr 2011, at 12:57, David E Jones wrote: The Introduction to Moqui Framework document is now ready and available do download through SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/ This document is meant for application developers, ie for the same people who would use Moqui. It is 12 pages with 2 diagrams and should be a quick read, but describes where everything is in the framework and from a high level how to do various things. BTW, feedback on this document and on the framework itself would both be most helpful... -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, David E Jones wrote: That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Hi David, I downloaded the beta and seen a great work! Looks like we will have soon a very good option to the actual OFBiz framework to think about. BTW, I couldn't find any implementation or plans regarding a portal/portlet feature. Will the moqui framework include this, or what? Regards, Bruno 2011/4/5 David E Jones d...@me.com On Apr 4, 2011, at 11:06 PM, Sam Hamilton wrote: Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] Taking a quick look at things I wonder if they are using Groovy to treat .java files as .groovy files. In Moqui the recommendation is to just use Groovy anytime you need a script for a service or other things. Of course, Moqui isn't so Java-centric as it seems like Play is, so runtime reloading during development is more of an inherent part of the framework and recommended tools as opposed to something that has to be added. - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] Yes, that is interesting. In OFBiz this is a HUGE problem because there is so much use of the hideous log rethrow pattern which results in the same, or very similar, stack trace being logged half a dozen times. One thing I've noticed about the use of Groovy in Moqui is that they do a good job of putting locations of things like scriptlets (including screen actions, etc) in the stack trace. On the other hand, the stack traces are HUGE because of all of the groovy proxy calls and such, and I've thought about writing something to filter those out... just haven't done it yet. I agree trimming out redundant stuff from the stack trace would be helpful, in addition to avoiding the redundant stack traces. - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] I'd like to do this sooner or later with Moqui and list addons or plugins, plus a document about how to create them (I couldn't find a doc like that for Play, maybe I didn't look hard enough). That framework has various means of supporting this right now, but I like the idea of creating a page to list addons/plugins, even if it starts out empty... ;) -David [1] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/overview [2] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/usability#aBetterusabilityisnotjustfornormalpeoplea [3] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/modules#repository Sam On 3 Apr 2011, at 12:57, David E Jones wrote: The Introduction to Moqui Framework document is now ready and available do download through SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/ This document is meant for application developers, ie for the same people who would use Moqui. It is 12 pages with 2 diagrams and should be a quick read, but describes where everything is in the framework and from a high level how to do various things. BTW, feedback on this document and on the framework itself would both be most helpful... -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, David E Jones wrote: That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Hi David, Congats on the beta release! You were asking for feature requests and today I ran across a java framework called Play they have a few of things that might be interesting: - they get their framework to compile java sources directly and then hot-reloads the JVM [1] - their logging seems to be very clear and would speed up bug finding [1] [2] - they have a module repo to specify third party hosted module repos [3] [1] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/overview [2] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/usability#aBetterusabilityisnotjustfornormalpeoplea [3] - http://www.playframework.org/documentation/1.1.1/modules#repository Sam On 3 Apr 2011, at 12:57, David E Jones wrote: The Introduction to Moqui Framework document is now ready and available do download through SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/ This document is meant for application developers, ie for the same people who would use Moqui. It is 12 pages with 2 diagrams and should be a quick read, but describes where everything is in the framework and from a high level how to do various things. BTW, feedback on this document and on the framework itself would both be most helpful... -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, David E Jones wrote: That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.orgsite which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a
My vision for the OFBiz Framework
I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Hi David, woow what an achievement, I am always interested in further developments of the ofbiz project and see this as a further step. You can count me in for the applications side of things. Regards, Hans On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 00:09 -0600, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David -- Ofbiz on twitter: http://twitter.com/apache_ofbiz Myself on twitter: http://twitter.com/hansbak Antwebsystems.com: Quality services for competitive rates.
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I would suggest we create an 11.x branch, and then start discussing a road map for porting the changes from Moqui to OFBiz. I hope to be available to help in November. -Adrian On 4/1/2011 11:09 PM, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.orgsite which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.orgsite which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
Adrian, Just to see if I understand correctly what you wrote: are you proposing to make changes to the OFBiz Framework using code and ideas from the Moqui Framework? If so, why not just migrate to use Moqui Framework? -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I would suggest we create an 11.x branch, and then start discussing a road map for porting the changes from Moqui to OFBiz. I hope to be available to help in November. -Adrian On 4/1/2011 11:09 PM, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
What does migrate to use Moqui Framework mean? Maybe I'm not understanding what you're proposing. -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:18 AM, David E Jones wrote: Adrian, Just to see if I understand correctly what you wrote: are you proposing to make changes to the OFBiz Framework using code and ideas from the Moqui Framework? If so, why not just migrate to use Moqui Framework? -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I would suggest we create an 11.x branch, and then start discussing a road map for porting the changes from Moqui to OFBiz. I hope to be available to help in November. -Adrian On 4/1/2011 11:09 PM, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
What I mean is throw out the OFBiz Framework and migrate the applications and specialpurpose components to run on Moqui Framework, and perhaps even incorporate the Mantle stuff too (mostly UDM, USL). After that OFBiz would be the applications project it was meant to be originally, as opposed to the framework + applications that is became out of necessity. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: What does migrate to use Moqui Framework mean? Maybe I'm not understanding what you're proposing. -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:18 AM, David E Jones wrote: Adrian, Just to see if I understand correctly what you wrote: are you proposing to make changes to the OFBiz Framework using code and ideas from the Moqui Framework? If so, why not just migrate to use Moqui Framework? -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I would suggest we create an 11.x branch, and then start discussing a road map for porting the changes from Moqui to OFBiz. I hope to be available to help in November. -Adrian On 4/1/2011 11:09 PM, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
I agree 100% with the end result - OFBiz running on a separate application framework. The question is: How do we get from here to there? That is what my original reply was trying to address. One other thing to keep in mind during this discussion: The Moqui framework is under the control of a single person, and possibly in the future, a small group of committers. Will the Moqui community have the necessary resources to support OFBiz once a commitment is made to use it instead of our own framework? -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:28 AM, David E Jones wrote: What I mean is throw out the OFBiz Framework and migrate the applications and specialpurpose components to run on Moqui Framework, and perhaps even incorporate the Mantle stuff too (mostly UDM, USL). After that OFBiz would be the applications project it was meant to be originally, as opposed to the framework + applications that is became out of necessity. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: What does migrate to use Moqui Framework mean? Maybe I'm not understanding what you're proposing. -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:18 AM, David E Jones wrote: Adrian, Just to see if I understand correctly what you wrote: are you proposing to make changes to the OFBiz Framework using code and ideas from the Moqui Framework? If so, why not just migrate to use Moqui Framework? -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I would suggest we create an 11.x branch, and then start discussing a road map for porting the changes from Moqui to OFBiz. I hope to be available to help in November. -Adrian On 4/1/2011 11:09 PM, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.org site which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:39 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: I agree 100% with the end result - OFBiz running on a separate application framework. The question is: How do we get from here to there? That is what my original reply was trying to address. That is the real trick isn't it... The idea of creating release branch and then working in the trunk to start migrating to Moqui is an interesting one. The fastest route to the migration would involve basically allowing much of it to be broken rather than trying to juggle both frameworks as application artifacts are migrated from one to the other. However, if we do that then the trunk wouldn't be reliable at all and groups with more immediate needs would simply not be able to use it. Maybe the project is mature enough now that a stable release branch would be adequate for many users and the community behind the framework migration could work independently of that. Another option would be to create a fork. That would allow the current OFBiz on the current OFBiz Framework to continue under development by those interested, and for those interested in a migrating to the Moqui Framework they could do it as a separate project without worrying about the legacy and backward compatibility issues, and ensuring proper functioning (which would allow for a more traditional develop and release model too, so it could go through normal alpha/beta/RC/etc cycles). The better way, I don't know... I guess it depends on how many in the community fall into each camp (needing something continuable workable to base their efforts on, versus being able to work on something that won't be ready for at least a number of months). One other thing to keep in mind during this discussion: The Moqui framework is under the control of a single person, and possibly in the future, a small group of committers. Will the Moqui community have the necessary resources to support OFBiz once a commitment is made to use it instead of our own framework? That is correct, it is a separate project with a different management and resource model. There are currently around 100 such libraries in OFBiz, and by size Moqui Framework wouldn't be the biggest. There would be dramatic dependencies on it of course, and I guess that's where your concern is based. As fas as support goes, those involved with Moqui don't need to support OFBiz or the OFBiz community, they just need to support the Moqui Framework. It's functionality that needs to be supported in this case, not people. Because of the more traditional release cycle of Moqui Framework, and because it has a well-defined scope, it should be used as-is and upgraded periodically just like any other library. Chances are OFBiz would benefit from a different build and deploy model than the default Moqui one, and probably different screen/form output templates (perhaps even a different XML Actions output template), and possibly even additional resource referencers, template renderers, script runners, etc. But, that is all external to the Moqui Framework. Anyway, the point is that bug-fixing will be the primary need for the OFBiz Community, and that is the need for all other Moqui Framework users as well. On a side note, there is a great benefit to OFBiz in using an external framework in that the development model changes from all sorts of random changes going into the framework as needed to a more defined and thought out change process to preserve a more generic and flexible set of tools. I don't think there is any way you can get that benefit without the clear segregation between both the projects and the communities behind them. -David -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:28 AM, David E Jones wrote: What I mean is throw out the OFBiz Framework and migrate the applications and specialpurpose components to run on Moqui Framework, and perhaps even incorporate the Mantle stuff too (mostly UDM, USL). After that OFBiz would be the applications project it was meant to be originally, as opposed to the framework + applications that is became out of necessity. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: What does migrate to use Moqui Framework mean? Maybe I'm not understanding what you're proposing. -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:18 AM, David E Jones wrote: Adrian, Just to see if I understand correctly what you wrote: are you proposing to make changes to the OFBiz Framework using code and ideas from the Moqui Framework? If so, why not just migrate to use Moqui Framework? -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I would suggest we create an 11.x branch, and then start discussing a road map for porting the changes from Moqui to OFBiz. I hope to be available to help in November. -Adrian On 4/1/2011 11:09 PM, David E Jones wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
I don't agree that a separate project is necessary to get a well defined application framework in OFBiz. We could achieve that in OFBiz if we could get everyone to agree on what an application framework is. Once that is defined, then it can be enforced - the same as it is with Moqui. -Adrian On 4/2/2011 12:53 PM, David E Jones wrote: On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:39 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: I agree 100% with the end result - OFBiz running on a separate application framework. The question is: How do we get from here to there? That is what my original reply was trying to address. That is the real trick isn't it... The idea of creating release branch and then working in the trunk to start migrating to Moqui is an interesting one. The fastest route to the migration would involve basically allowing much of it to be broken rather than trying to juggle both frameworks as application artifacts are migrated from one to the other. However, if we do that then the trunk wouldn't be reliable at all and groups with more immediate needs would simply not be able to use it. Maybe the project is mature enough now that a stable release branch would be adequate for many users and the community behind the framework migration could work independently of that. Another option would be to create a fork. That would allow the current OFBiz on the current OFBiz Framework to continue under development by those interested, and for those interested in a migrating to the Moqui Framework they could do it as a separate project without worrying about the legacy and backward compatibility issues, and ensuring proper functioning (which would allow for a more traditional develop and release model too, so it could go through normal alpha/beta/RC/etc cycles). The better way, I don't know... I guess it depends on how many in the community fall into each camp (needing something continuable workable to base their efforts on, versus being able to work on something that won't be ready for at least a number of months). One other thing to keep in mind during this discussion: The Moqui framework is under the control of a single person, and possibly in the future, a small group of committers. Will the Moqui community have the necessary resources to support OFBiz once a commitment is made to use it instead of our own framework? That is correct, it is a separate project with a different management and resource model. There are currently around 100 such libraries in OFBiz, and by size Moqui Framework wouldn't be the biggest. There would be dramatic dependencies on it of course, and I guess that's where your concern is based. As fas as support goes, those involved with Moqui don't need to support OFBiz or the OFBiz community, they just need to support the Moqui Framework. It's functionality that needs to be supported in this case, not people. Because of the more traditional release cycle of Moqui Framework, and because it has a well-defined scope, it should be used as-is and upgraded periodically just like any other library. Chances are OFBiz would benefit from a different build and deploy model than the default Moqui one, and probably different screen/form output templates (perhaps even a different XML Actions output template), and possibly even additional resource referencers, template renderers, script runners, etc. But, that is all external to the Moqui Framework. Anyway, the point is that bug-fixing will be the primary need for the OFBiz Community, and that is the need for all other Moqui Framework users as well. On a side note, there is a great benefit to OFBiz in using an external framework in that the development model changes from all sorts of random changes going into the framework as needed to a more defined and thought out change process to preserve a more generic and flexible set of tools. I don't think there is any way you can get that benefit without the clear segregation between both the projects and the communities behind them. -David -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:28 AM, David E Jones wrote: What I mean is throw out the OFBiz Framework and migrate the applications and specialpurpose components to run on Moqui Framework, and perhaps even incorporate the Mantle stuff too (mostly UDM, USL). After that OFBiz would be the applications project it was meant to be originally, as opposed to the framework + applications that is became out of necessity. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Adrian Crum wrote: What does migrate to use Moqui Framework mean? Maybe I'm not understanding what you're proposing. -Adrian On 4/2/2011 11:18 AM, David E Jones wrote: Adrian, Just to see if I understand correctly what you wrote: are you proposing to make changes to the OFBiz Framework using code and ideas from the Moqui Framework? If so, why not just migrate to use Moqui Framework? -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: Based on the previous discussion we had on this subject, I
Re: My vision for the OFBiz Framework
The Introduction to Moqui Framework document is now ready and available do download through SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/moqui/files/ This document is meant for application developers, ie for the same people who would use Moqui. It is 12 pages with 2 diagrams and should be a quick read, but describes where everything is in the framework and from a high level how to do various things. BTW, feedback on this document and on the framework itself would both be most helpful... -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 12:17 PM, David E Jones wrote: That is a good question. The best way to get an idea of how things would look is to look at the example component (in runtime/component/example), the configuration files (default: framework/api/conf-default/MoquiDefaultConf.xml, environment-specific: runtime/conf/...), and the interface definitions for the API (framework/api/src/org/moqui/...). I'm working on a document now that describes the different parts of the framework and how the API is organized (Introduction to Moqui Framework) and hopefully I'll have that posted this weekend. -David On Apr 2, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Brett Palmer wrote: David, We are interested in this project. Let us know the best way to start playing with the framework and see how we could use it. We do a lot of custom applications and moqui sounds like a framework that could be used for this. Thanks again for your efforts. Brett On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, David E Jones d...@me.com wrote: I still don't know if or how all of this will turn out, but here is the latest on the changes I've been wanting to make in the OFBiz Framework, but gave up on doing directly in OFBiz about a year and a half ago. The redesigned framework is a separate project that is now in beta (I just did the release today): http://www.moqui.org/ The Moqui Framework is now feature-complete for the planned feature set of the 1.0 version. There are details about this in the release notes, including everything in this release and the previous 3 releases, plus a list of features not to be included in 1.0. At this point the framework is far enough along that it is a clear demonstration of the changes that I would like to see in OFBiz, but that are difficult to do in a project with such a mature community and a large set of software that depends on it. Some of the main things are how the security and authorization are done, how the API is organized, the separation between framework and non-framework runtime artifacts, the deployment model (described in detail in the RunDeploy.txt file in the project), the way templates are used for simple-methods (XML Actions in Moqui) and the form/screen/etc widgets (XML Screens, Forms in Moqui), and how the web controller in OFBiz could be combined with screens and made hierarchical to introduce a lot of flexibility and far better organization of applications (less files open, easier to find things, automatic menu creation, per-used menu items/subscreens, and much more). Now that the beta is out the next step is to start building more real-world applications with it (so far the framework just has an example app and some basic tools built on it), and those will act as test cases as well. I don't have any intention to create another project like OFBiz that is a comprehensive ERP/CRM/etc/etc/etc system, and instead I'm hoping those will be separate project. However, I am working on a project to act as a basis for various applications that will share the same data model, common services, and derive from a common set of stories too. This project is called Mantle. To see how this all fits together, check out the home page on the moqui.orgsite which has a diagram that includes these things. There is also a link to the github repository that has the Mantle UDM (Universal Data Model) progress so far. Back to the first comment: I don't know all of this will turn out. In a way it would be interesting to have OFBiz migrate to use these things, but that may not be of interest to very many in the community, so I won't be too surprised if that never happens. I've already heard from a couple of people who have proposed this idea, and I know some others would probably be very against it. On the other hand, if anyone is curious about such a thing, now it's possible to get an idea of what it might look like by look at the Moqui Framework and the example application and such. -David
