Apache Open For Business (Apache OFBiz) is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that provides a common data model and an extensive set of business processes. But without proper guidance on developing performance-critical applications, it is easy to make the wrong design and technology decisions. The power and promise of Apache OFBiz is comprehensively revealed in a collection of self-contained, quick practical recipes in this Cookbook.

This book covers a range of topics from initial system setup to web application and HTML page creation, Java development, and data maintenance tasks. Focusing on a series of most commonly performed OFBiz tasks, this book provides clear, cogent, and easy-to-follow instructions designed to make the most of your OFBiz experience.

Let this book be your guide to enhancing your OFBiz productivity by saving you valuable time. Written specifically to give clear and straight forward answers to the most commonly asked OFBiz questions, this compendium of OFBiz recipes will show you everything you need to know to get things done in OFBiz. Whether you are new to OFBiz or an old pro, you are sure to find many useful hits and handy tips here. Topics range from getting started to configuration and system setup, security and database management through the final stages of developing, and testing new OFBiz applications.

Unlock the power and promise of Apache OFBiz with this comprehensive collection of concise, insightful and proven recipes, timesaving techniques and helpful hints.

What you will learn from this book

• Learn OFBiz artifact organization and effective (OFBiz) project navigation skills.
• Configure OFBiz web applications and framework settings using various WebTools.
• Access and manage one or more database(s) using the OFBiz Entity engine.
• Create Java programs that call other OFBiz Services and utilities.
• Use Groovy to prepare data for web page presentation.
• Enhance existing OFBiz applications or create new ones, by implementing OFBiz Screen, Form, Tree and Menu Widgets.
• Create and deploy OFBiz Events and Services.
• Make easy administrative changes from the command line.
• Add web service client(s) and service provider features to your OFBiz instance.
• Minimize frustration and wasted time with straightforward recipes designed to get you up and running quickly.

Approach

The best way to experience OFBiz is to dive right in and start "kicking the tires". No matter if you are an end user exploring the out-of-the-box e-commerce web store or a software developer getting ready to build a new application, you will find, eventually, that you perform the same tasks over and over again. This book is designed as a reference to guide you through those oft encountered OFBiz tasks. It is a collection of recipes, not necessarily in any particular order of importance, that address and give answer to many of the very real world questions asked about how to do things with OFBiz.

Who this book is written for

If you are an OFBiz user who has some familiarity with enterprise software systems, and perhaps more importantly, Internet and Web exposure, you will be able to glean useful information from this book. For following some recipes you will need only basic knowledge of modern browser behavior (for example: how to click a mouse button) while others assume only a passing familiarity with a text-editor and XML documents. If you are a software developer looking for Java and/or Groovy examples, this book also includes a chapter on Java software development.