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I am working for a service company called Telaside, just created (www.telaside.com).

I started studying and using ofbiz 3 months ago, while building a proposal for an e-commerce site here in France (budget between 250 000 - 350 000€). Our answer was a mix between ofbiz for the e-commerce 'plumbing' and an opensource content management solution for the visual front office parts. The customer was a big company, we were short listed, but they preferred a 100% Microsoft/.NET solution.

Nevertheless, I was convinced enough of the huge ofbiz potential that we built another proposal, for a customer selling on-line lessons mainly to people who would like to learn about arts, food, wine and so on. The budget is quite different, the global envelope is about 15000 Euros. We won the deal, so I started developing on the ofbiz platform.

So a first point I would like to emphasize is that whatever big is the targeted site, ofbiz can be an answer.

How have I overcome the obstacles and supported the important things for my organization?

• The site I am developing www.labelleecole.fr is a mix and match of the principles found in ofbiz, so I did not have to change a lot of things. The big difference is mainly that a product is a lesson, and there is a schedule attached to it. I am linking a product to a fixed asset (already existing) but modified a couple of things here and there in order to be as close to my needs as I can. For example I've modified the order cancellation process in order to decrement the seats occupation in the fixed asset calendar, the checkAvailability() of the ShoppingCart not to compare with now() but with the fromDate of the fixedassetproduct, otherwise my future lessons are never available (the same apply for the createOrder() dates filtering), the filterByDate method of the EntityUtil class to include the given date instead of using only after or before, for the same reason...etc.
• One important thing that I know now is to always look at what has been done in the code before trying to do it from scratch. Often, somewhere, there is a bsh file, a service, a static method or something else probably waiting to be called and that will do nearly what I am looking for. And if it does not, then a combination of elements will probably answer my question. 'Study a lot, code a little' is in one of the docs. I totally agree with that!
• Also, the fact that I was involved with Si in the entity test engine suite helped me a lot discovering the entity engine features. Need less to say that it was a great help. So helping the community helps you also. That is a very important point I think.
• The book 'The Data Model Resource Book' is also a must have, in order to understand the data model.
• There is quite a learning curve, that is sure. But the efforts really worth it. There is so much to win using all those technologies.
• This community model is really interesting. It's very pleasant to work and share with people all around the world.

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