OFBiz has recently turned 12 years old. At the time it was written many more
modern libraries either didn't exist or were not usable, including:
- Groovy
- ehcache
- Quartz Scheduler
- Atomikos
- JackRabbit (and JCR in general)
- Shiro
- Camel
- JSON-RPC, REST, JSON in general
- ElasticSearch (and to some extent even Lucene)
- Document and other NoSQL databases (of which ElasticSearch is sort of, but I
mean CouchDB, MongoDB, Hadoop and derivatives, etc)
Some of these are used, or with some customization usable, in OFBiz. Many of
them overlap a lot with parts of the OFBiz framework, and unlike JPA/Hibernate
sorts of things, do a better job than what is in OFBiz.
Some big ones are caching, job scheduling, content management, and even
searching. The OFBiz ProductSearch stuff works well enough (though not great)
for smaller sets of products, but doesn't compare in flexibility, scalability,
and speed to ElasticSearch and some other Lucene-based alternatives. With some
simple framework extensions (like the DataDocument, DataFeed, and DataSearch
features of Moqui) implementing excellent search for products would be easy, as
would search for any other part of the system... and all combined in a single
system-wide search or segmented as desired.
Another big one, that has been most painful for me in dealing with OFBiz, is
the lack of consistent scripting and expressions. Once you get used to the
elegance of Groovy dealing with BSH and JUEL is downright painful... and for me
anyway requires a number of misses before I finally get it working. The
${groovy:...} work-around is there, but quirky, and the resulting object is
unreliable as in some OFBiz XML files it results in a String while in others it
results in the actual Object the expression evaluates to.
Even if it is self-serving, I agree that OFBiz was brilliant in its day, but it
needs FAR more modernization than is currently happening or that is likely to
happen. The new feature velocity in the framework is so slow (mostly because of
the architecture and existing code, partly because of collaboration breakdown
reasons), that it can't keep up with alternatives.
So yes, OFBiz is great, but it exists in a world that is progressing far faster
than it can. My reason for starting fresh was just that simple: development
velocity.
On top of that OFBiz uses certain approaches that are difficult to deploy and
maintain. Try dropping all of OFBiz into a single war file for easy upload
deployment on the dozens of modern cloud/PaaS services. Try adding plug-ins
that require a proper init/destroy lifecycle instead of relying on static
initialization and no proper tear down. Try finding framework functionality in
thousands of static methods spread across dozens (or hundreds?) of classes. I
know these weaknesses of OFBiz well... they are my mistakes. Correcting them is
another matter... and one I didn't find possible in the context of the project
with the limited time I have available. It was faster and easier to start fresh.
When I started OFBiz I was 23 years old and had about 2 years of experience in
ERP systems. I think it's great that there is enough interest to keep the
project alive and at whatever pace keep it progressing both technically and for
support of business activities. Still, something must be done for it to remain
competitive with open source and commercial alternatives if it is to compete...
including with what I've been calling the "Next Generation" of OFBiz, ie Moqui
Framework, Mantle Business Artifacts, and the various projects and products
built on them.
As good as it is, there is lots of room for improvement and others are doing
just that. I don't think Al was implying that "OFBiz is no longer brilliant",
maybe some are overly sensitive to that. The fact is that OFBiz is what it is,
and without major improvements alternatives exceed it in so many ways. It
doesn't make OFBiz less brilliant, but in a sky with other bright stars its
brilliance is only relevant in context.
OFBiz has lots of momentum, and pretty good marketplace around it, and a lot of
people are making good money doing work based on it (including me). Still, I
tire frequently of explaining that so many things are known issues with the
project and not easy to correct, but are corrected in the "Next Generation", ie
Moqui/Mantle. Usually the fix is a hack and workaround that can't be committed
because it breaks other things, just things they don't intend to use (this
still has consequences for bigger projects... things all seem to come back
around).
So, it is what it is. I understand the motivation to paint OFBiz the best
possible for marketing purposes and such... I personally did that for years in
spite of known flaws. Eventually that only goes so far... OFBiz versus other
open source alternatives has its pluses and minuses, and most in the community
are very aware of those minuses. This causes many to drool over cleaner, newer
solutions like Magento, even if it is based on a totally different underlying
technology and one that doesn't scale as well or interact in enterprise
environments as well.
Sooner or later reality catches up... best to stay ahead of it or at least have
long-term plans and alternatives to fall-back on.
-David
On May 20, 2013, at 11:10 AM, Adrian Crum <adrian.c...@sandglass-software.com>
wrote:
> A quick clarification on this.
>
> "OFBiz was brilliant when David created it over ten years ago, but..."
> implies OFBiz is no longer brilliant. OFBiz continues to be just as
> brilliant, with a talented team of developers keeping it current with current
> technology.
>
> -Adrian
>
> On 5/20/2013 4:04 PM, Al Byers wrote:
>> Hi Carlos,
>>
>> I am just starting to look around for OFBiz work and was intrigued to see
>> your email there this morning. I have been working with OFBiz for over 10
>> years now and am interested in what you have going.
>>
>> But I must ask if you have considered Moqui (moqui.org <http://moqui.org>) -
>> David Jones's successor to OFBiz? I was just at a small conference with
>> David and the folks at HowWax Media and based on David's comments and what I
>> know about Moqui from my past year of working with it, if you are starting
>> anew, and especially if you are not using the current e-commerce features of
>> OFBiz, then you would be well served to look at Moqui. OFBiz was brilliant
>> when David created it over ten years ago, but technology has made great
>> advances in that time and if you have the freedom to do so, it makes sense
>> to start with the latest base.
>>
>> I have attached David's introduction to Moqui PDF, which I don't think is
>> readily available off the moqui.org <http://moqui.org> website.
>>
>> I hope to hear from you soon.
>>
>> Al Byers
>> 801-400-5111
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Carlos Cruz <car...@nbtbizcapital.com
>> <mailto:car...@nbtbizcapital.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi;
>>
>> I'm looking for a Java programmer that is familiar with OFBiz.
>> Particularly with OFBiz Web Services and OFBiz Entity Engine.
>>
>> I'm interested in hosting OFBiz for some very specific industries
>> and I want to develop some very specific interfaces.
>>
>> This is a long term project, I could be flexible with the hours.
>>
>> If you're interested email me for more details.
>>
>> Also feel free to forward this email to someone you think might be
>> interested.
>>
>> Thanks!!
>>
>> Carlos
>>
>> logo-for-social-media-sites-email_signature
>>
>> CruzControl Radius
>>
>> Your Success Is Our Service
>>
>> www.ccradius.com <http://www.ccradius.com>
>>
>> email:car...@ccradius.com <mailto:email%3acar...@ccradius.com>
>>
>> 1-877-285-5499 <tel:1-877-285-5499>
>>
>>
>
