I want to expand the conversation about using Ofbiz not just Ecommerce.
First let start by thinking that everything is a system, living is a system.
Everything we do is a bunch of black boxes with input and outputs, with
the processes to deal with the input and create the output.
To address ERP, we all in our lives, implement resource planning, some
better than others.
An example is meal planning. Though most do this second nature from a
lot of experience, it can also be model in software.
So how does resource-planning work in the home? From the Power used to
do things like cooking, heating, to house repair is all resource planning.
The “E” part simply defines the max scope of the software to handle such
activities.
Most of your specs for a “requirements Engine” is resources planning.
The end Goal is do we have the necessary resources to do something.
One of those resources is Cash. For seniors this is paramount if they
are on a fixed income. Resource planning and creating a budget is
something Ofbiz can do with some added customization or expanding the
current system.
Have you thought to use Ofbiz to develop the requirements of you AAL
project?
Use the Project manager will give you feel for what I mean.
So lets talk about Ofbiz.
You have a framework that already does a lot, you specify a entity and
its relationship then with just a few commands you have that available
for the Screenlet.
Layered on top of the framework is the Application that are generic to
most of living but is primarily focused on business.
Then you have the specific layer like Ecommerce and manufacturing.
Now don’t discount manufacturing since that is what you do in the
kitchen as recipes.
I am serious when I say David is Architect a comprehensive system that
can used in every aspect of our lives.
So I would suggest:
1)Download Ofbiz and run it in Localhost mode as a desktop to use the
project manager and get feel for what it does.
2)Put it on a server so others in you group can do projects and tasks.
=========================
BJ Freeman <http://bjfreeman.elance.com>
Strategic Power Office with Supplier Automation
<http://www.businessesnetwork.com/automation/viewforum.php?f=52>
Specialtymarket.com <http://www.specialtymarket.com/>
Systems Integrator-- Glad to Assist
Chat Y! messenger: bjfr33man
Vadim Eisenberg sent the following on 9/5/2010 12:01 AM:
Hi BJ,
It is an interesting idea ! You actually propose to use OfBiz as the core
platform for the AAL, and not only as an e-commerce solution. We will
consider it as an option. However, I would say that it seems that it could
be an overkill to use an ERP solution as a general platform for
applications and devices. This option could be too heavy, in terms of
unneeded code/unneeded business features/high learning curve etc.. The
idea is definitely interesting, though.
Best Regards,
Vadim
-------------------------------
Vadim Eisenberg
IT for Healthcare& Life Sciences
IBM Research - Haifa
BJ Freeman<bjf...@free-man.net> wrote on 04/09/2010 04:37:21 PM:
From:
BJ Freeman<bjf...@free-man.net>
To:
user@ofbiz.apache.org
Date:
04/09/2010 04:38 PM
Subject:
Re: OfBiz e-commerce customization
one of the concepts that is hard for most web developers is ofbiz
Ecommerce is like a third Tier Application.
Ecommerce depends on all the other Back-end applications and the
framework.
So you don't design a page then add the data in the db to support it.
Also you will find the Ecommerce in the Second Volume starting about
page 393.
You can also look at the data model for Health care in Vol II.
There is a section about Health Care Delivery. mind you this is only
data modeling and the actual business logic and UI has to be developed.
My back ground is hardware automation as well as embedded applications.
in the 70's I designed a home that was automated, it used compressed air
and cylinders for activation of doors and ramps. At that time proximity
sensors were all that was available.
I say this because of your focus.
Being nearly 70 I have worked towards a computer companion, as such,
using AI. its purpose was to be my guide when I got too forgetful.
so here is something you may not have considered. Ofbiz as the Home
automation with in the home.
Ofbiz has a sync capability used in the POS that could be used to sync
the ofbiz running in the home with the main website.
This way each person would have their own personalize themes for their
home.
this would be an embedded Linux server with touch screen. it is all
enclosed.
you would use the network that automatically connects to other network
nodes and builds an Intranet in the home. this allows for other systems
to interact with ofbiz.
The Framework of ofbiz has the ability to run schedule services. the
scripts for the services can be modified without re-compiling or
restarting ofbiz, though the actual service defs do require a restart if
changed or added. this is being worked on so the home system can be
updated on the fly.
There is also a Setup component that can be added to for new components.
needless to say I very sold on ofbiz and what it can do.
it does though, as David said have places that need to fleshed out.
=========================
BJ Freeman
Strategic Power Office with Supplier Automation<http://
www.businessesnetwork.com/automation/viewforum.php?f=52>
Specialtymarket.com<http://www.specialtymarket.com/>
Systems Integrator-- Glad to Assist
Chat Y! messenger: bjfr33man
Vadim Eisenberg sent the following on 9/4/2010 1:02 AM:
Hi David,
Thank you for your answer and explanations. I failed with the
formatting
for the second time, so I will try to write in plain text from now on.
You wrote: "when asking questions here please keep in mind that
responses
you get are volunteer responses and the only qualification you can be
sure
of for those responding
is that they are capable of subscribing to the mailing list. If many
people respond with something
consistent then it is a safer bet that you can rely on the
information,
but usually not otherwise."
I guess this is how Open Source works :) ? by volunteers contributing
code
to the product and answering questions in the mailing lists. I still
would
like to hear as much opinions as possible from the developers "in the
trenches", so anybody is welcome to provide them. I would like to
thank BJ
again for providing his opinions.
Please note that the project I participate in, is a kind of Research
and
Development project, sponsored by EU and implemented by a consortium
of
academic and industrial partners. The project is planned for four
years
(ending in January 2014). One of its goals is to create an open source
implementation of an e-commerce solution - uStore, suited for the
field of
AAL - Ambient Assisted Living (that is a kind of "smart home" for
senior
citizens). The main concept of uStore is similar to the concept of
AppStore of Apple ? the AAL application developers would be able to
upload
and sell their applications from the store. In addition to that, AAL
related devices and human services would be sold. An additional
important
feature is to integrate "social commerce" ? user reviews, blogs,
forums
etc.
Please note that developing uStore is Research and Development and
there
are not yet concrete AAL businesses that would immediately use it. The
goal is to provide some reference open source implementation in four
years. This implementation would be later supported and extended by an
open-source community according to the business needs of AAL
businesses,
once some real AAL businesses would use it. One of the goals is to
reuse
the existing open-source OOTB solutions in any field as much as
possible
in order to save resources as much as possible.
As a result of the situation, the accent here is more on e-commerce
features of existing e-commerce solutions, especially related to the
e-commerce frontend, than on their ERP features. We would like to use
the
simplest and the most straightforward standard business model
(preferably
OOTB) for e-commerce and invest more resources into the frontend
features.
By the frontend features I mean the website, its accessibility,
including
presentation on smart phones, search, recommendations, user reviews,
blogs
and forums etc. As I understand the strength of OfBiz is actually its
rich
ERP data model, however here we probably do not need the advanced ERP
features of OfBiz.
I have read your HEMP Light document ? it was interesting and provided
some insights for me. Currently we are in process of finalizing the
use
cases/requirements of the uStore and evaluating existing e-commerce
solutions, with OfBiz being one of the main candidates.
Thanks& Regards,
Vadim
-------------------------------
Vadim Eisenberg
IT for Healthcare& Life Sciences
IBM Research - Haifa
David E Jones<d...@me.com> wrote on 03/09/2010 10:00:38 PM:
From:
David E Jones<d...@me.com>
To:
user@ofbiz.apache.org
Date:
03/09/2010 10:01 PM
Subject:
Re: OfBiz e-commerce customization
Vadim,
About your formatting: this mailing list filters out all HTML
because HTML email messages tend to be VERY large and the Apache
Software Foundation in general has many thousands of messages going
through mailing lists every day.
Back to your original question: when asking questions here please
keep in mind that responses you get are volunteer responses and the
only qualification you can be sure of for those responding is that
they are capable of subscribing to the mailing list. If many people
respond with something consistent then it is a safer bet that you
can rely on the information, but usually not otherwise. With a
question as long and involved as yours chances are you'll only get a
small number of responses, and chances are your experience will be
VERY different from those few who do respond.
OFBiz is a large project. A good developer can learn to work
effectively with the framework with a couple of weeks of training
and a couple of months of hands-on development. However, even a good
developer will have a hard time picking up all of the data
structures and business logic even after many months of study, and
realistically since most people don't or can't do that, it usually
takes years of work experience and even then they'll only have
knowledge of the parts of the system that have had the opportunity
to work with.
Understanding the business side is much easier for someone who has a
good business background, and by good business background I mean
really good experience with how businesses actually operate and what
sorts of information businesses actually keep track of when
operating. Sometimes people coming out of university business
programs will have this, but most of the time they do not. Most
people with business degrees will have learned more about laws and
how to manipulate people than about the myriad of complexities of
managing a warehouse, handling purchasing, or tracking information
about products to facility the many touch points with those products
throughout the company, and making it easy for customers to find
products they want, or how to figure out where customer interest
intersects with stuff you want to move.
So anyway, keep in mind that your diving into a pretty comprehensive
ERP system, but one that is made up of what people have seen fit to
contribute for free. An extremely wide variety of data structures
and common business processes are represented in the system, though
many are not complete, or at least not complete in the way your
client will want to use them.
The only way to really be sure is to document ALL business
activities (usually easiest if organized by process and not by role
or by system function), and then do an overlap/gap analysis to see
how each business activity would be done in the system, or if there
is not something to do it (or it is not adequate for what your users
want) then detail what the system needs to do to help manage that
activity. Once you've done that, then you'll know what the system
can do for you as-is, and what needs to be done to expand and change
the system to do what your client needs. Short of that, everything
is a guess and guaranteed to be wrong (the only question is by how
much and in which direction(s)...).
To help with that I recommend this material (this is what I use
withclients):
http://www.dejc.com/home/HEMP.html
I'd also recommend looking at some of the generic business process
stories that have come from OFBiz-based projects and been refined
somewhat over the years (though keep in mind that these stories in
some places represent activities that are not managed by OOTB OFBiz,
ie these need an overlap/gap analysis document to make them more
meaningful):
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBREQDES/Universal
+Business+Process+Library+Index
Best of luck,
-David
On Sep 3, 2010, at 11:32 AM, Vadim Eisenberg wrote:
Hello BJ and other OfBiz developers,
I was not subscribed to the mailing list so I did not receive the
answer
of BJ to my previous message -
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/ofbiz-user/201009.mbox/%
3c4c7ffc99.9020...@free-man.net%3e
. Because of that I cannot post a response to it. Secondly, I used a
wrong
MIME in my previous message, so all the bullets and formatting were
missing. I am reposting the original message below in the right
format
(any additional comments/opinions are welcome). In addition, my
response
to BJ follows. Sorry for the mess I created.
Hi BJ,
Thank you for your prompt response. I think I've got the general
idea.
I
still would like to ask a question about learning OfBiz:
The three volumes of the data model book comprise about 1700 pages
together. Should I use the book as a reference or do I have to read
all
the three volumes before starting my work on OfBiz ? Which parts of
the
book are required before I begin my work ?
Thanks& Regards,
Vadim
My original message:
===========================================================================================================
Hello OfBiz developers,
My name is Vadim Eisenberg and I work at IBM Research - Haifa, on
the
UniversAAL project - http://universaal.org/. It is a consortium
European
project. Its goal is to create a platform for applications, services
and
devices for Ambient Assisted Living, that is a kind of "Smart Home"
for
senior citizens. As part of the platform, we - several software
developers
- have to develop an e-commerce site - uStore
http://universaal.org/index.php?
option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=9&Itemid=21
. This site would be a one-stop-shop for software, services and
devices
for Ambient Assisted Living.
We consider using OfBiz for implementation of uStore.
I would like to ask you several questions about the features we want
to
implement. I would be glad to hear any information you can tell me
about
how hard could it be for us to implement these features. Please note
that
we have no prior experience with OfBiz.
Any your thoughts, intuition, experience, advice about
OfBiz/business
programming are welcome.
In particular, the following information would help us very much :
How much work should be done by us in order to implement all the
features
that follow (Person/Months, Person/Years, for skilled OfBiz
developers/general software engineers). Which part would be to use
existing "extension" mechanisms of OfBiz and which part would be
actually
changing the OfBiz code ? Here your intuition/experience from
related
projects is welcome, we do not need exact numbers, just a ballpark.
How much time the general software developers have to learn about
OfBiz
and how skilled in OfBiz they should become in order to implement
these
features
E-commerce website features:
Using e-commerce site for selling software (such as AppStore of
iPhone)
and downloadable files in general (video, presentations of courses
etc.).
Here the issue is to manage links where the bought files could be
downloaded. The idea is to prevent a situation in which buyers would
buy a
software application, receive a link to it for downloading and share
the
link afterwards with anybody they want, so anybody would be able to
download the application without paying for it.
Using e-commerce site for selling services (human services and
others)
Extending e-commerce site with general widgets, such as calendar,
clock,
map, a widget for downloading files, etc., and integrating the
widgets
with the OfBiz
Integration with other websites/services:
Integrating an e-commerce website with another (non-OfBiz backed)
site
-
adding possibility for sellers to add products to the e-commerce
site
via
the other site, to see customer feedback provided on the e-commerce
site
via the other site
Integrating an e-commerce website with another (possibly non-OfBiz)
e-commerce website, such as eBay/Amazon. What are the current
possibilities of integration with eBay ?
Integrating an e-commerce website with post/delivery services/sites
Adding advanced features:
Adding support for signing business contracts between service
consumers
and service providers, between providers of different services etc.
via
the e-commerce site
Adding support for applying capability/requirement model, such as
JSR-124, (for example for matching between customer's requirements
and
capabilities of software, devices and services). The customer or
software
agent on behalf of the customer could provide his requirements as
part
of
his account information, and the e-commerce solution would match
between
the products (according to their capabilities) and the requirements
of
the
customers.
Has OfBiz a recommendation engine (providing recommendations to a
user
based on his activity - searches, purchases, reviews etc.) ? If no,
how
hard would it be to add it ?
Can the OfBiz-based e-commerce web site be presented by browsers of
smart
phones ? How hard would it be to enable it ?
Changing search/recommendations of OfBiz to be based on the
requirements
of the customer
Changing search/recommendations of OfBiz to be based on the
geolocation of
the customer
Adding support for customization of products/services and changes in
the
prices according to the customization during the purchase process
Adding support for a composition solution of hardware, software and
human
services (bundles, kits). A seller could compose a new product by
combining several existing products
Adding support for manual approval of products by site
administrators
before submission of the products to the e-commerce site
Adding support for managing versions of the software applications
that
are
sold on the e-commerce website
Sorry for so many questions and sorry if some of them are out of
context.
Best Regards,
Vadim
-------------------------------
Vadim Eisenberg
IT for Healthcare& Life Sciences
IBM Research - Haifa
