WEEK 2: ERP SOFTWARE ANALYSIS – FIGGINS

This week, I have decided to take a look at JFire, and how it can be used for trading, ERP, CRM, and
accounting. It is found at SourceForge, and we should be careful to download the correct file from the list
of files in the directory:

We can extract this file, and run the executable to open the wizard:

Accept the terms, set the install location, and specify any specific options pertaining to administration. We
need to be careful to set the Server ID and bind addresses correctly. For this example, we will stay with
the default localhost address.
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This is where we hit our first snag. We don’t have a database setup natively, so the service cannot
establish a connection. Furthermore, the demo link no longer works. When I tried to access the JFire
website, the request timed out. Maybe this program is also too old!
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On to the next one. This time, let’s try Apache OFBiz. Here, the website is up and running, and the
demo’s work normally. We can download the software using a small link on their website:

We can extract the files, which will take a long time due to the numerous amount of small files inside
the .zip. The website tells us to verify the download by comparing the hash against its public pgp key. We
will feign compliance and skip this step despite the numerous warnings of security issues. The install
notes are listed in the INSTALL.file which can be opened in any normal text editor. We have to download
the Java Development Kit (JDK) from the link provided in this text. Once this is done, we can open a
terminal window and execute the gradle-wrapper file from the top of the directory:

I was getting some problems here. I used many different versions of Powershell to execute the program
and download source material, but I kept getting this error in the terminal window:

In the help section, I encountered a problem setting the JAVA_HOME variable to where the JDK software
was. I decided to cut my losses at this point.
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Since I was unable to create a live demo for this assignment, I decided to utilize the demo that was
available on the website. I decided that the ERP system was much more beneficial than the front end e-
commerce store for this course.

Here we have a variety of different tabs to place requests, quotes, and more. All of these forms are crucial
to ensuring that business processes are handled appropriately. One of the more interesting items was the
order list, where managers can view the order dates, the number, and the billing and tracking information
attributed with each.
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I had hoped that this final installation would be easier or as straight forward as I had hoped, but it seems
that each of these requires their own set of dependencies and prerequisites. Testing the software is simple
in the demo. It involves entering values into each field, and viewing the changes after the query is sent.
Using the software is simple, and learning to use it would not take much effort once all the individual tabs
are discovered. OFBiz itself doesn't have built-in
messaging features for direct application
communication. However, there are a couple of
ways applications can interact and exchange data
within the OFBiz ecosystem. For example, OFBiz
utilizes a rule engine with Event-Condition-Action
(ECA) functionality. This allows developers to
define rules that trigger specific actions when
certain events occur within the system. For
example, an event might be "Order Created," and
the action could be sending an email notification or
updating another application's database. While not a
direct message exchange, ECA rules can facilitate
communication and data exchange between
different parts of the system based on pre-defined
conditions. Also, OFBiz integrates with external
messaging systems like Apache Camel or JMS (Java Message Service). These external systems provide
robust message queuing and routing functionalities. Applications can leverage these external systems to
send and receive messages, enabling communication and data exchange beyond OFBiz's core
functionalities.
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