OFBiz Resources

The purpose of this page is to help you quickly review OFBiz. It and odoo are probably the most discussed open source ERP systems other than iDempiere. I wanted to know "is there enough in OFBiz to warrant learning more". Said another way "is there a reason to believe that OFBiz is better than iDempiere". For me, the answer was no. Here is a script (list of commands) that will help you install OFBiz on Ubuntu 14.04. Here is a script (list of commands) that will point OFBiz to PostgreSQL (instead of Derby). Here is a list of resources that I found useful in evaluating OFBiz. My thoughts on OFBiz:

My hope and reason for looking into OFBiz was in hopes that it offered an advanced and superior architecture. The reason for this hope is because OFBiz is part of the Apache foundation group of projects. The service based development approach is interesting; however, it is still one monolithic application that sits on a single server. I do not see how it could improve upon iDempiere's modular and plug-able approach to allowing integrators to plug in their own modules.
The navigation is somewhat confusing
- There is no search option for a specific window, report or process.
- The window hierarchy is inconsistent. It is hard to know what is a sub-tab type relation and a completely different (zoom) type relation.
- Processes and document status options are buttons that are listed at toolbar options. It is hard to know which process are related. it is not scale-able to offer many options.
OFBiz likes the concepts of wizards. For example, when creating an Order, it first asks three questions/fields, then 4, then details, then add lines... Once you start creating an order, that is the only order you can work with until you either set it to a specific state or clear it all together. Otherwise, the current order blocks all new orders.
- The concept of wizard style order entry is interesting. It is a common compliant that iDempiere is intimidating because it has so many fields. I believe new users would welcome a wizard approach; however, power users would probably not be so happy. I do not appreciate the wizard approach. I can create and complete a multi-line order in iDempiere in a matter of seconds where I only touch the mouse to complete the order.
OFBiz is not multi-tenant. This is not too big of a deal since most people to not use multiple tenants.
OFBiz does seem to be multi-org. I was able to create two organizations. I did not get to far enough to test financial reporting.

Disclaimer:

I have almost 15 years with iDempiere - I have less than a week with OFBiz