Explain the lifecycle of a sales order in OFBiz from cart to fulfillment?

A sales order moves through a well-defined status chain, driven by services rather than direct database updates, so every transition can trigger related side effects such as inventory reservation, invoicing, or notifications:

flowchart LR
    A[Shopping Cart] --> B[Order Created]
    B --> C[Order Approved]
    C --> D[Inventory Reserved]
    D --> E[Picked and Packed]
    E --> F[Shipment Created]
    F --> G[Invoice Generated]
    G --> H[Payment Captured]

Concretely: createOrder persists the OrderHeader, OrderItem, and role/contact-mech data from the cart. Approval runs changeOrderStatus and typically triggers inventory reservation against the Facility component. Fulfillment creates an ItemIssuance and Shipment, and finally Accounting generates an Invoice and records a PaymentApplication against it.

Because every step is its own service, a company can plug in custom logic - fraud screening before approval, or a different shipping carrier integration - by adding SECA rules around these standard services instead of modifying core order code.