Hans, I have a question regarding the new approach: As you said that at the time of order entry customer selects a set of features and if a variant with that particular set of standard features is not found, a new product is created for that. My question is, can't it be possible that a customer selects a set of features for which no variant exists and also the company does not sell such a product? In that case a wrong product will be created at the time of order entry. For example a company sells Sofa's of different color and sizes. Now it may be possible that for small size there are four color variations and for the medium size only three are available. In such a case if a user selects the fourth color variation for the medium size Sofa, a wrong product will be created at the time of order entry.
For this, if this is a problem at all, we may put constraints on the feature selection, but I am not sure how and that may be cumbersome. With the current implementation based on the Variant tree, I think it is possible to put such constraints at the time of feature selection. May be I am getting this wrong, but just a thought from my side. On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 8:32 AM, Hans Bakker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Good morning! (at least for me it is...) > > As I have written before I have a customer who has many variants (>1000) > which do not really fit in categories or configurations and it has to > work with drop-shipments. > This alternative proposal has practically no limit on the number of > variants and is largely compatible with the current implementation. > > Please let me know for comments/questions and enhancements and what the > opinion of the community is, and if this is a valuable addition to the > current system. > > Regards, > Hans > > > > Current function in OFBiz. > -------------------------- > The OFBiz system has a facility to allow the selection of variants of a > basic product called a 'virtual' product, for example a t-shirt. This > shirt can have colors and sizes. These colors and sizes can be defined > in features types. Features relate to these feature types and specify > the actual sizes and colors. These features can be specified on the > virtual product as selectable features and as standard features on the > variant products. Not all feature combinations need to be there if > certain features combinations are not available or compatible. Only > feature combinations which result in existing variant products can be > selected when the product is ordered. > > Current implementation. > ----------------------- > The current OFBiz implementation builds a variant tree according the > features listed on the virtual product, checks if the related variant is > present. When not found, the feature will not be in the tree and cannot > be selected. This is fine upto about 200 variants. if more variants are > present, the time to built the tree and the size become too big. The > service used is called 'getProductVariantTree' and is called from the > productdetail.bsh program. > > Proposed alternative approach. > ------------------------------ > Instead of creating a variant tree, a feature tree should be created > using the specified features on the virtual product without checking the > available variants. In order to be able to specify incompatibilities > between features the existing entity 'ProductFeatureIactn' should be > used where general (no productId) or specific (with productId) > dependencies or incompatibilities can be specified. > If a feature selection is done at order entry, the related variant > should be found which has all these standard features. If the variant > can be found, the processing is the same as it is now: this variant will > be added to the shoppingcart using the variant prices. > If the variant cannot be found, the system will create the variant > automatically, using the prices in the to be created 'FeaturePrice' > entity similar to the 'ProductPrice' entity. The prices in this table > however are price adjustments to the price specified on the virtual > product. > > This new approach can be added to the existing implementation by adding > a field to the product or allow more values in the 'isVirtual' field and > change the processing accordingly. > > -- > AntWebsystems.com: Quality OFBiz services for competitive rates..... > > -- Thanks & Regards Mridul Pathak Hotwax Media http://www.hotwaxmedia.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________ Office : 509.855.4113 Mobile : +919425926892
