Apache OFBiz™ is continually improving, thanks to its large and active community of open source developers. As leading Apache OFBiz™ service providers, we get to see firsthand how these improvements benefit our clients and developers in the real world.
After 25+ years of custom OFBiz™ development, we've narrowed down the top six most impactful improvements we've witnessed in OFBiz. Though there are certainly more, the following six have resulted in noticeable improvements for our clients, and for our development team.
#1. Apache Solr integration
Apache Solr is an enterprise search server with a REST-like API. Just like OFBiz, it's highly scalable, adaptable, comprehensive, and capable of processing and handling large amounts of data.
The Apache Solr / OFBiz integration not only sped up searches, but also greatly enhanced the search capabilities of OFBiz. With Solr, search results are almost instantaneous due to searching the file system vs. database.
Solr also added faceted and hierarchical search capabilities to OFBiz.
#2. Support for REST
REST offers several advantages that make it a preferred choice for building and consuming web services particularly utilizing micro services architecture.
The greatest benefit we've seen come from this is the support for headless architecture; three of our longtime clients have all utilized a headless approach in portions of their projects.
Fun fact: It was a HotWax employee who suggested adding REST support to OFBiz and spearheaded the project in the OFBiz Community.
#3. Gradle build system migration
Though it's a separate tool outside of OFBiz, this development is nonetheless significant because it simplifies the maintenance and upgrade of OFBiz dependencies on external libraries, which makes it easier to keep the system up to date and secure.
It also helps developers build what they need to build, faster.
The OFBiz community selected Gradle due to its active community and widespread enterprise use (Meta and Google for example), and we've had two large enterprise commerce clients utilize the Gradle migration for their own projects.
#4. Upgrade to Java 17
Java 17 is a major improvement from version 8, which was the previous version of Java supported by OFBiz, not only because it has a much richer feature set, but it also has a number of enhanced security features that reflect advances in cryptographic standards and secure coding practices.
These improvements help developers build more secure applications and better defend against modern security threats.
#5. OMS enhancements
This string of enhancements introduced advanced order management features in OFBiz, most notably:
- multi-channel order processing
- drop-shipping support
- and enhanced inventory management
These improvements made the flexible, responsive, and robust framework of OFBiz even better for enterprises that rely on it for their OMS needs.
#6. Business analytics improvements
These include:
- better integration with business intelligence platforms
- customizable dashboards
- and enhanced real-time analytics capabilities
These improvements make it easier for enterprises to make decisions based on accurate data, and create a space where there's an accessible single source of truth.
Conclusion
Apache OFBiz™ is constantly evolving as a framework. This continuous evolution is one of the reasons open source software is used across the entire world, and is also why OFBiz continues to maintain its reputation as a trustworthy, robust, and flexible ERP and business software framework.
The community surrounding the OFBiz project continues to innovate, collaborate, and embody the ASF ethos of community over code- which in turn generates better software for the public good.
While it can be easy to go through the motions of updating your software with every release, it's rewarding to look back and take note of what those updates actually did. Better security features, enhanced business process capabilities, and game changing integrations that make the software better for users and developers are exciting and a reminder of why Apache OFBiz™ is one of our business software frameworks of choice.
