docs/asciidoc/_include/ofbiz-glossary.adoc

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[glossary]
= General Glossary

[comment]
It's important to sort glossary entries in alphabetic order to avoid duplication or search failing.

This glossary is intended to help beginners with OFBiz terms and concepts. +
Some of them come from the https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/OFBiz+Related+Books#OFBizRelatedBooks-DataModel[Data Model Resource Book] some are OFBiz specific.

[#APPLICATION]
Application::
. **for end users** , an application is a top level menu entry, it's for managing a business object:
order, accounting GL, accounting AP, facility, project, .... +
An application can be dedicated for a specifics business and can use part of other applications. +
With Apache OFBiz OOTB (Out Of The Box) you will find the main application (the <<CORE_APPLICATION_COMPONENTS, Core Application>>)
and with OFBIZ plugins you can find application more business specifics.
. **technicaly** , an application is a part of <<COMPONENT, Component>> beginning with the ~webapp directory. +
A single component may contain several applications each mounted on a unique URL.
Within each component, the "ofbiz-component.xml" file defines the available applications and how those applications shall be mounted on URLs.

[#COMPONENT]
Component::
. **for end users** , an OFBiz component, is an <<APPLICATION, application>> or a group of <<APPLICATION, applications>>. +
Knowing which component is used by a application can be useful for "key users" to be able to set application parameters or modify configuration files.
. **technically** , An OFBiz component is a directory used by the OFBiz framework to specify and load application server resources necessary to execute an OFBiz instance. +
Each OFBiz component must have a unique name (typically the name of the root directory for the component) and
a configuration file called: "ofbiz-component.xml". +
Component resources may include, but are not limited to:
* webapps,
* Java source/classes,
* classpath resources,
* scripts, entity definitions,
* entity data files,
* service definitions,
* service and entity ECA rules,
* test suites,
* encryption keystores.

A component contains applications and/or the lower level tools and definitions needed by applications. +
A component can be used for self-contained extensions, including applications and logic/data modifications,
to the suite of tools and applications that come with OFBiz. +
For more detail look at developer-manual.

[#CORE_APPLICATION_COMPONENTS]
core application components:: The core applications in Apache OFBiz are web applications that serve common
business needs found in most enterprises. +
They are included in the ofbiz-framework and each one has one (or more) menu entry. +
Currently there are :
* <<_accounting>>, +
  menu entries: Accounting, Accounting-AP, Accounting-AR
* <<_catalog>>, to manage products, prices, promotion rules, categories, catalogs, stores and more. +
  menu entry: Catalog
* <<_content_management>>,
* <<_facility>>: Wharehouse management, to manage facilities, inventory, physical inventory, in and out shipment, and more. +
  menu entry: Facility
* <<_human_resources>> management, +
  menu entry: HR
* <<_manufacturing>>: Materials Resource Planning, define production schemas and tasks, Bill of Materials, Equipment allocation,
Workers assignment, Job Shop
* <<_marketing>>: Marketing Communications Management and Sales Force Automation +
  menu entry: Marketing, <<_sfa>>
* <<_order>>: Fully featured sales and purchase order management module, including
  ** request
  ** requirements
  ** quote
  ** order
  ** statistics
* <<_party>>, enables organizations to maintain parties (human and other legal entities), their roles and user accounts, and lots more.
* Work Effort Management, to manage work efforts, tasks, calendar, maintenance assignments and more.

With these core applications multiple others can be build. In ofbiz-plugin you can find some.

[#CRM]
CRM:: **C**ustomer **R**elationship **M**anagement

[#DEMO_DATA]
Demo Data:: Demo data are loaded with the command `gradlew loadAll` or `gradlew "ofbiz --load-data readers=dDemo"` +
 +
Demo data are present to help understanding ofbiz application process, most of the time it's only the minimum of data,
For a correct understanding, it's necessary to create more data to have a full functionnal OFBiz.

[#E_COMMERCE]
E-Commerce:: The buying and selling of goods or services over electronic systems.

[#ENTITY]
Entity:: An entity represents an important business concept that is stored as a record in the database.
It is used in the document and OFBiz to generalize about the behavior of persistent information.
For example employees and employments are important business concepts for HR application, stored in the database.
We could refer to an action directly on a particular entity by saying "Create a new employee" or "Create a new employment".
We could alternately describe a general create action by saying "Create a new entity".

[#ENTITY_DATA_MAINTENANCE]
Entity Data Maintenance:: It's a sub-application of WebTool application, it's necessary to have specifics authorization
to access it.  +
Use Entity Data Maintenance to search, look, create, update and delete entities data, most of time it's really not the good solution
to use it for other think that only looking data. +
Exceptions are

. when there was a bug and it's necessary to manually do a data correction
. manage entities, which have'nt a user interface, main example are for StatusType, Enumeration, but there are some
type entities, like BenefitType for HR. +

[NOTE]
For creation, as Primary keys must be entered manually apply the ID general advice. +
In ID only standard characters and without space are authorized. ID length must be less than 20 characters. +
Generally manual primary keys are all upper case with underscores between words and are a meaningful mnemonic i.e.
A_PRIMARY_KEY.

[#ERP]
ERP:: An acronym for **E**nterprise **R**esource **P**lanning, an ERP is basically a category of software used for
managing a business. It is often a package containing several individual, but integrated, applications.
Some of those applications might be Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, or Point of Sale.

[NOTE]
Example of ERP: Apache OFBiz, OpenBravo, Odoo

[#INTERNAL_ORGANIZATION]
Internal Organization::
An Internal organization is a special term in OFBiz that allows you to flag the main accounting company that is being setup. +
It can also be used to highlight relationship between a party group (any of your departments, business units or subsidiaries.)
and your company. +
This relationship is used to filter party groups as being part of your
company to distinguish them from other groups which are external. For example your
marketing department is an internal organization while a suppliers sales department
is not.

[#MRP]
MRP:: **M**aterial **R**equirements **P**lanning

[#PARTY]
Party:: User, person, organization or other entity (where entity is not an OFBiz "Entity" but rather entity in the legal sense)
implied in at least one process modeled and implemented by OFBiz. +
Party is a term used to simplify collecting information that used in a common manner
by different people and things. +
The most common party types are people and groups. +
Both people and groups have contact information. +
A party is identified by a unique Party Id.
Using this Id OFBiz can collect and find contact (and other information
and processes) for both people and groups in the same way. This is why you will
often see Party Id as a field in a form or a filter as you work in OFBiz.

[NOTE]
Example of party: a administrator of the website; a company dealing goods and/or services via the website;
 an OFBiz customer assigned a unique party identifier, etc.

[#PARTY_ID]
Party Id::
The unique identifier for a party. +
The id is stored as text so in some cases you will see an id that helps you identify the party it is linked to
(e.g. Party Id DemoEmployee, or DemoSupplier). +
In other cases the Id is created by OFBiz and is will be simply a number from a
sequence(by default it starts from the sequence 10000). +
In either case the Id is unique.

[#SCM]
SCM:: **S**upply **C**hain **M**anagement