Each OFBiz component is build around group of entities/business domain, which roughly correspods to a chapter from Data Model Resource Book vol 1. I think reading that book will help you understand how the component is supposed to work
It approaches reusable design from the data model point of view, as opposed to end user requirements or OO designs. However, I find that to be very useful - once you have a good grasp of the data model, you have a big jump on the requirements and the entities that will eventually be modeled as classes.
PARTY
id
ORGANIZATION : PARTY
name
doing_business_as
INDIVIDUAL : PARTY
first_name
last_name
PARTY_RELATIONSHIP
from_party_id references party(id)
to_party_id references party(id)
from_date
to_date
ORGANIZATION_CONTACT_RELATIONSHIP : PARTY_RELATIONSHIP
Have you seen the SO question relational-database-design-patterns?
EDIT: Having got interested in this question I had a look for any books on the subject and found the following volumes:
The Data Model Resource Book: A Library of Universal Data Models for All Enterprises: Vol 1
The Data Model Resource Book: A Library of Universal Data Models by Industry Types: Vol 2
The Data Model Resource Book: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling Vol 3
I've not read the series, so I can't recommend them myself, but they look interesting.
Check out:
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Model-Resource-Book-Vol/dp/0471380237/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
and the volumes 2 and 3. I am sure you will find a full schema for your problem there ;)
Each OFBiz component is build around group of entities/business domain, which roughly correspods to a chapter from Data Model Resource Book vol 1. I think reading that book will help you understand how the component is supposed to work
Check out the Data Model Resource Book by Len Silverston:
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Model-Resource-Book-Vol/dp/0471380237/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232336996&sr=8-1
It approaches reusable design from the data model point of view, as opposed to end user requirements or OO designs. However, I find that to be very useful - once you have a good grasp of the data model, you have a big jump on the requirements and the entities that will eventually be modeled as classes.
You may want to look into Len Silverston's Party Model. Here's a link to his book: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Model-Resource-Book-Vol/dp/0471380237.
I have no experience building something on that scale, though I think that thinking of it as 500k rows x 500 - 1000 columns sounds a bit ridiculous.
This is not a great design.
You should read up on the Party Model, and Table Inheritance to see a design built to last. A skeleton:
If you're just looking for data models, I recommend the following books:
I have Vol 1 and Vol 2 and these have been pretty helpful in the past.
I find the Data Model Resource book to be a good source of inspiration for modeling business structures. Apache Ofbiz ERP was built around the concepts in this book.