Hi Ted, I'm still in full-doofus mode regarding OFBiz and its capabilities for integrating with third-party services/apps from various frameworks/languages. I'm not even strong enough on the uptake to know whether something like the ASF's Camel project might be stepping in the right direction.
I haven't thought much about UML diagramming tools since I used the old Rational Rose product while doing some Struts 1.x web app programming (over 10 years ago). I'm afraid that when it comes to design/development/implementation this tech writer is always playing catch-up with the professionals. Documentation is my strength. That said, diagramming some use cases in UML would be an important consideration for coming up with answers to various questions that C-levels might have while conducting OFBiz cost-benefit analyses. I know that Ruth Hoffman wrote a great introductory book about high-level OFBiz ecommerce functionality, a solid jumping-off point for business managers who are as IT-non-savvy as I am. I am among the demographic of end users for such hand-holding documentation. How can another OFBIz-related project help potential end users take that next step from Hoffman's introductory book toward practical milestones? Perhaps gathering requirements would be a reasonable place to start. I will evaluate options for hosting such a collaborative documentation project (question for OFBiz site admins: is there a sandbox area in the wiki that is available?) I sense a tiny bit of traction. Here's hoping it gets beyond just a few people talking around one another. On 14-02-13 10:12 AM, Ted Byers wrote: > On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:36 PM, Todd Thorner <tthor...@infotinuum.com>wrote: > >> Thank you, Mr. Byers, for posting such a remark-worthy suggestion, and >> thank you, Mr. Rosser, for providing the inertia that might help start >> an exciting new OFBiz-related project (congrats as well on securing a >> happy jeweler client). >> >> I would be an enthusiastic participant in any documentation project >> whose outcome helped business managers become dedicated OFBiz end users. >> Indeed, I am one such hopeful business manager, excited by the prospect >> of having OFBiz at the core of my transactional processes, daunted by >> the IT learning curve. >> >> I am by trade a tech writer with over 15 years of experience, mostly >> doing API docs for SDK products. I also have a Fine Arts degree in >> Creative Writing, and those two properties combined make me one of the >> most sought-after writers in the Vancouver IT industry. I am, though, >> as I said, now working on becoming a successful business owner. >> >> From my perspective, this might be a proverbial golden opportunity. I >> would learn a lot and move up that learning curve, plus I have much to >> offer those who seek to improve OFBiz documentation and attract more >> CFOs & CMOs to the product. >> >> I ask the community how a prospective team might start a workflow (Agile >> or whatever) for such a project. Would a focal point of managing >> productivity be JIRA or something like that? Is there an >> eat-the-dog-food instance of OFBiz out there allowing authorized >> contributors to use its Scrum functionality? Maybe even its CMS >> interface? I would love to help make OFBiz compatible with any >> arbitrary CMIS-compliant product, but that's just me... >> >> Thanks for everything that everyone does to make this product world-class. >> >> > You're welcome Todd, > > I don't have a specific answer for the questions you raise. I generally go > with whatever works with the team with whom I am working at the time. > > My priority, right now, is to first learn how to set up a multi-tenant > installation of OFBiz, as well as a multi-site installation of wordpress; > and then how to integrate the two so that OFBiz's ecommerce component can > be used to handle payment for subscriptions to the contents on one or more > of the sites in the Wordpress installation. I'd also want to be able to > support use of, the relevant back office components (e.g. the accounting), > for a venture that is focused on publishing. > > I then want to install Redmine, in order to be able to exploit it's project > management features (including issue/bug tracking). I have not yet begun > to see to what extent Redmine's capabilities are complementary to OFBiz's > capabilities or how much overlap there may be, e.g., WRT the work effort > components). While Redmine, itself, integrates into a couple version > control products (notably Subversion), it does not seem to have, as far as > I can tell, support for any of the UML diagrams. What I am keeping an eye > out for is an open source product that both relates each UML diagram (such > as a use case scenario) to one or more items on a wish list (easily created > in Redmine), as well as relating each use case diagram to the code that > implements it. Do you, or anyone else, know of an open source product that > supports UML documentation, that could be integrated with Redmine? One > that can construct a suite of UML documents given a codebase (and that can > be used to construct a complete set of UML diagrams, or at least use case > and E-R diagrams, for OFBiz, WordPress and Redmine), would be particularly > useful as that could automatically provide core design documentation, and > the use case documents could be used both to provide feature lists and a > suite of howto documents. Is there any automated tool to make the > documentation task easier? > > One of the things that makes this especially daunting is that OFBiz is Java > while Wordpress is PHP and Redmine is Ruby. And there are a few features > that do not seem to exist that I would probably implement in a mix of Perl > and C++. Integration of web apps involving such a mix of languages is > something I have not yet tried (all the web apps I have developed have been > either entirely Perl (with JavaScript on the client side) or a mix of Java > Servlets+JSP/JSF, so I am unsure of how to integrate two apps that use very > different technologies, and especially how to maintain session info in that > effort. > > Cheers, > > Ted >
