[OFBiz] Users - Expertise required

[Matthew E. Porter]

Yaakov:
    Here's my opinion.  With #3 and #4, I am slightly biased since we 
own a hosting company (and have subsequently removed ourselves from the 
Ofbiz development market as not to compete with our customers).  So 
fair warning...


> 1) What level of expertise is required in order to use OfBiz to stand 
> up
> an online store application?

Obviously, proficient knowledge in Java, the application server of 
choice, and the RDBMS of choice in absolutely essential for running an 
online application.  The failure of most production systems (not 
necessarily ofbiz!) is the inability to handle when something goes 
wrong.  Whether application, servers, or network, we are judged by our 
downtime, rarely our uptime.  If this is for play, these may not matter 
to you.  The same would be true regardless of what system you use.

Specifically Ofbiz- I think it's difficult to answer until you know 
what you want to customize in Ofbiz.  Our first deployment of Ofbiz 
(over 2 years ago) needed only need to make UI customizations - colors, 
menus, etc..  This required no code changes.  Therefore, it our 
expertise did not need to be very high.  Subsequent deployments have 
not been this simple.  Perhaps, you can tell us what you want to do 
with Ofbiz which will dictate the recommended expertise?


> 2) Does anyone know anything about the training videos that are 
> offered?
> In particular, I am interested to know what I would be able to do after
> viewing the February 2004 DVDs. I am pretty proficient in Web
> technologies using J2EE (maybe not as much in EJBs), Struts and so on.
> I just wanted to know what effect and learning curve I am to expect.

Thankfully, you will not need any EJB experience.  I can not state how 
good the training videos are.  However, I doubt Andy and David would 
put them out if they weren't very good.
>
> 3) How easy/hard is it to have some "popular" JSP hosting plan and
> deploy OfBiz based online store there? Are there only certain hosting
> providers that have whatever OfBiz needs to run?

Is there a provider you have in mind?  Is this for play or production?  
Each provider is different in what they offer.  Therefore, it's 
difficult to answer.


> 4) What are some of the hosting providers that people are using to
> deploy their OfBiz solutions?

Without going into our customer list, we have a number of Ofbiz 
deployments.  There are other people on this list that host Ofbiz 
solutions.  I am sure you will get an adequate response.  I would like 
to recommend looking at the Ofbiz.org hosting provider list 
(http://www.ofbiz.org/services.html).  There are people/companies that 
help support this project.



Cheers,
   Matthew