The Apache Open For Business Project / News: Recent posts

As you probably have noticed the developer list has been cut back quite a bit. The reason for this is there were way too many people with write access to CVS and we felt the need to implement a bit of security. Those of you who are left, it is because you have or we expect you to have the need for CVS access.

From this point on, anyone who wishes to submit changes or new code to be placed in the source tree, please send those to either Andy Zeneski or David Jones. Small, single updates should be handled this way. If/When the time comes and you need direct write access to the source tree, let us know we will make that desision on a per developer basis.... read more

First of all, thank you everyone for your patience. It's been a while since we've released anything, but here it is, finally...

This release includes the new entity engine which takes the place of the code generator by the entity code generator. It also includes an improved control servlet.

One of the more major parts of this release is the new eCommerce application which is based on the flexible data model that is getting better all the time.... read more

I apologize for the lack of releases and other updates lately. A lot has been going on in CVS, but if you don't watch that then you will have missed it.

The two greatest new things involve workflow, persistence and ecommerce.

The Workflow designer contributed by the US Naval Research Lab has been updated and refactored by Oliver Wieland and David Ostrovsky. Recently David got it to the point where it runs pretty smooth. That is available in the 'designer' module in CVS.... read more

ATTN: ofbiz developers --

The number of developers on this project is growing everyday. In order to keep things flowing nice and to help keep down the amount of personal email sent to specific people, I would like to request all developers to join the developer mailing list.

Time after time different people ask the same questions, I believe it would help everyone if project questions/comments were more public.... read more

The Open For Business Project is starting to grow, and get very busy. Because of this it is difficult for me to handle many of the issues that come up in the regular course of development of various parts of the project.

Now that ofbiz and jaguar are combined, Andy Zeneski can handle many of these issues. We will also be looking for people interested in becoming technical leads for various parts of the application such as workflow, rules, constraints, analysis, content and applications pieces such as accounting, catalog management, party management, ecommerce, human resources, order handling, shippment handling, and so forth.... read more

The Open For Business web site has been updated and redesigned. A whole bunch of features have been added to it. A new look and feel is also in place, with tabs on the main page to make getting at information quicker and easier with having so much on the screen all at once.

Additional documentation is now on the site under the Documents tab. All of the documentation that used to only be in the release file is now there as well, including JavaDocs.... read more

I know it's been a while since the last release. We had a number of central issues to address and they took a little bit of time, but now it is finally READY!

This release begins a new period in the Open For Business Project. We have just combined with the Jaguar e-Business Suite project and thanks to that we now have a very nice control servlet.

A number of other cleanups have been done, and a bunch of incremental features from the task lists.... read more

The Jaguar e-Business Suite project was started soon after the Open For Business project when Andy Zeneski had almost the same idea I had for an open source project. Initially it looked like we were going in different directions, but we have resolved the differences and united our efforts to make the combined project more effective and useful than either could have been alone.

Jaguar also has a SourceForge project site under the project name 'jag' (see http://sf.net/projects/jag/ ). We chose to use the ofbiz site instead of the jag site for a number of reasons, but it was a somewhat arbitrary decision.... read more

The code for the workflow editor/designer contributed by Jim Tracy of the US Naval Research Laboratory is available in the 'contrib' module in the ofbiz CVS repository on SourceForge.

For more details on this, see the workflow forum.

-David

A number of people have written me and asked about what the real point of the Open For Business project is, where it is at, and where it is going.

Open For Business will eventually become an enterprise wide information management system, tracking in package everything that a given business needs to keep track of. With this goal, it is easy to see why it must be in open source.

Now, back to reality. Starting out our goals are much simpler. A data management architecture is a big priority, that comes from using J2EE and entity code generated by entitygen and defined in an XML file.... read more

Because of an increasing interest expressed by many people to be involved with the Open For Business project, I have revised and expanded the subproject and task lists. There is plenty to do, so let me know if any subproject or task in particular interests you.

Thanks,
-David

The CVS Repository is now up-to-date. With some reorganization necessary in the latest release it got out of date for about a week, but it is now back up to date and ready for use in working on the project.

-David

This release is minor as far as new features go, but is a major cleanup and organization update. This is especially true for the Data Model effort which has now been expanded, organized, and tested. For more details see the release notes.

Enjoy!

Finally! Another release added to ofbiz. This release is a MAJOR step for the project. A number of things that I have been planning for a while are starting to come together.

The major updates in this release include new automatic file generation in the entitygen module, a new extensive data model (of about 292 entities) in commonapp, and relation support for ViewEntity.jsp in entitygen.

Check out the release notes for more details.... read more

The June 1st 2001 release is now available. This release mainly includes improvments to the Entity Code Generator focused around input validation, field-type definition and related entity definition. For more details, see the release notes.