Hi Brett:
Thanks so much for doing this.
Ruth
Brett Palmer wrote:
Here are the notes that I took during the ApacheCon 2009 User Round Table.
The conference was a success but I believe was less attended than normal.
I've been to about 6 ofbiz conferences and this one was the least attended
by ofbiz users than others. I attribute this to the current economic
situation rather than anything else.
Interestingly, a lot of the comments during the round table were similar to
ones that we have had in the past. The project continues to make progress
but from outsiders it is difficult to measure as some of the new features
takes months to see in the end product.
There were six people in attendance at the round table. A few had to leave
early to catch planes in the afternoon. Of those that attended the round
table two were speakers (myself and Ruth). Three of the attendees were
service providers trying to better understand the direction of ofbiz and one
was a new user that was active in other Apache projects and wanted to know
more about ofbiz.
Here are the key comments:
* Everyone was very interested in the new project that Dave introduced a
couple of weeks ago about a specialized application for small business. They
wanted to know a lot more about this project and what it would include.
There was a lot of excitement about the proposal. I didn't have a lot of
details to share so I told them to watch the mailing list for more details
on the subject.
* Most common complaint. The UI for the out of the box ecommerce
application. The general feedback was that from a technical perspective
people like ofbiz but it was difficult to convince key business people that
ofbiz was right for their organization because of the lacking "sizzle" in
the default application. Non-technical people have a hard time determining
how difficult it is to customize the UI and in a quick review will opt for a
better looking application because that is all they can really evaluate.
The general thought was that the lack of a very nice front end was slowing
the adoption for ofbiz
* Another suggestion was around content management. The ofbiz CMS is not
fully complete with a UI and business logic. The question was asked if it
was possible to plugin other CSM packages the the Java Content Repository
(JCR).
* There were some comments on OpenTaps and what it means to OFBiz. This is
always an interesting discussion and I tried to explain the licensing
problems with using OpenTaps. The one benefit people had about using
OpenTaps is that it has a full CRM application that people can use from the
start. OfBiz is more general and requires more customization.
* SugarCRM and other similar applications are examples of very large user
communities because the application is a complete solution. It is difficult
to convince people to use ofbiz because there are pieces that are not
complete and require customization. The ability to customize is a benefit
for some users but a drawback for others and is a hindrance to wide spread
adoption.
* Is it possible to break up the components more into separate installable
modules. For example, framework versus applications. We discussed how this
is currently done but the feedback was to make it easier for people to pick
and choose what components to install.
* Any plans to integrate a complete rules engine into ofbiz
* Version control for release branches. Are they plans to do more frequent
releases? The current download of the nightly build is misleading as user
think it is a stable release build but it is really just the nightly build
from the trunk.
* It was stated that OFBiz is a unique apache project as it is focused on
business solutions where as most apache projects focus on a single technical
problem. How that technology is used in an application is generally
irrelevant. OFBiz is different in that it tries to provide a complete
solution for businesses and users. The feedback was that in the future it
would be nice to attract more end users to the ofbiz apache conference
rather than technical people that implement the solution. This was agreed
that if there were more complete applications that the user community would
grow and all people in the community would benefit.
* Another strategy for OFBiz would be to define business best practices and
then implement those processes into the applications. This is a difficult
task as all businesses are unique but just as ofbiz adopted a common data
model there most be common business practices that would benefit all
businesses.
* Improving the integration of the seleniumXml test framework with the
existing ofbiz test framework. Also more examples of tests using the OOTB
ofbiz applications would be desired.
The above comments are notes that I took during the round table discussion.
They are not my own personal opinions but of those of the group. Please
feel free to comment on these ideas for the benefit of the community.
Overall, the people attending the conference commented that they would like
OFBiz to continue to have these each year. They would like to see more
users attending the conference in the future.
Thanks,
Brett
