BJ Freeman wrote: > > first I suggest you get the The Data Model Resource Book, Revised > Edition, Volumes 1 & 2" books referred > here > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Related+Books > this will let you know the abilities of ofbiz. > then read > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/Catalog > Your questions would be answered differently for each industry. >
BJ, Thanks for your response. I don't mean to come off sounding cheap, as I will definitely consider buying this book if I can figure out how to make OFBiz do what I need, but surely there is a free (as in beer) resource? I'm still in the proof of concept phase with my OFBiz adoption... The wiki page doesn't really answer the "why" questions I posed. I think they're a great resource to understand how to build and edit my catalog once I've designed how the products will relate to one another, but I'm without a guideline for which tactic to adopt. If it helps, the target industry is hand built custom musical instruments. There are dozens of options for every part of the instrument itself, and more options for the accessories, like the case and bow. Some of the composition questions answer themselves. Obviously the components that are going to be available for sale as separate components, like the case and bow, will themselves be products. And since there are so many dimensions of options, it seems inefficient, even if it is possible, to make every permutation into it's own variant product with standard features. Does this mean it should be purely configuration, with nothing represented as a feature? Or, if there should be a mix, as I suspect, how should I go about deciding what should be a configuration and what should be a feature? Also, there's a hole in the knowledge I've sponged up so far as to what subassemblies are good for and when I should use those. In the end, the goal is to a traditional eCommerce site that makes it possible to order non-custom products and to request quotes for custom instruments. We'd like to leverage as much of the MRP functionality as possible, even though right now the entire production facility is literally in a basement. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/In-Search-Of%3A-Theory-of-product-catalog-composition-tf4946653.html#a14164822 Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
