OFBiz appeals to a remarkably diverse audience because of the breadth of solutions it enables. Whether you are a software developer or a business owner, you will find much to surprise, delight, and, most importantly use for your next enterprise software endeavor under the OFBiz umbrella.
In fact, there is so much to OFBiz that it is often difficult to know where to start. Unlike learning HTML or Java, OFBiz has no specification or authoritative source acting as the final arbiter of what works or is "correct". Rather, OFBiz is a well organized collection of "artifacts" that may, at the user's discretion, be mixed, matched, reorganized, and augmented with new artifacts to arrive at just about any business solution imaginable.
Just imagine an open source software project that includes:
Its own database schema and seed data already loaded and ready to run.
An event-driven Service engine that enables code reusability across the entire instance. Services may be written in Java or any supported language, including Groovy, Bean Shell, JPython, and more.
Hundreds of business logic workflow implementations ranging from a complete e-commerce Application to manufacturing and MRP, content management, user authentication, and authorization support all out-of-the-box and ready to use.
Everything you need to serve up complete browser compliant User Interfaces (UI).
And much more!
With all the possibilities that OFBiz brings to the table, where does one begin? From experience, the best way to get up and running quickly is to download the project code and start kicking the "tires". Use some of the suggestions in this book to help quickly experience some of the state-of-the-art tools, utilities, and complete Applications that are part of OFBiz out-of-the-box.
Always remember: there is no "right" or "wrong" way to doing anything with OFBiz.
Everything you need to get up and running quickly and with minimum fuss is packaged with the OFBiz distribution. That includes an integrated database, a ready to use web server, and all the network and communications infrastructure necessary to be up and running in minutes. All you need to do before you download OFBiz is:
Ensure that the prerequisite Java Software Development Kit (SDK) is installed. Please see the following table.
Access to a reliable Internet connection.
A modern browser handy to do some installation verification.
How do you know which version of Java to install? The following table summarizes available download options and necessary Java prerequisites:
|
Download title |
Recommended usage |
Minimum Java version |
OFBiz version |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Recommended for new users and those looking for the most stable project package. |
Java 1.5 |
* |
|
|
Legacy release. Not recommended for new users. |
Java 1.4 or Java 1.5 | |
|
"Nightly Trunk Builds"
|
Project committers or users needing latest code. May not be stable or thoroughly tested! These files are available on the "snapshots" download page. |
Java 1.6 * * |
Nightly trunk builds do not have release numbers. |
* Nightly builds and version numbers represent bug fixes only.
* * "trunk" versions before January 2010, Java 1.5
Once OFBiz is downloaded and available locally on your hard drive, install it by "unpacking" it with your operating system's "unzip" tool.
Once unzipped, OFBiz is ready to run.