[WEB4LIB] Zope Experiences?

[Chris Gray]

I have been experimenting with Zope for a while now and like it very much.
I have a few small data-base backed applications up and running very
smoothly.

As one person commented there are two problems with moving to Zope.  There
is a fairly steep learning curve and it may take a while to really 'get it'.
As one person said very aptly, the main difference between someone learning
Zope and learning PHP is that the person learning Zope has a tendency to
burst out of their office at intervals proclaiming a new found insight.  The
second problem is with the documentation.  You can't get very far without
knowing Python (not a bad thing to know at all) and sometimes the only
documentation for certain details is inside the Python script files.

Another difference between Zope and PHP is that Zope as well as including an
HTML templating language is a through-the-Web, object-oriented site
maintenance interface.

I run Zope both in Windows 98 and in Debian GNU/Linux with very stable
results.  The current stable release of Debian includes easy to install
packages for Zope and some of its most important accessories, but they are
not as up-to-date as what's available directly from www.zope.org.

Another open source product well worth checking out is OpenACS
(http://openacs.org/).  It is an AOLServer/PostgreSQL based product that is
more fully developed than Zope.  With OpenACS you are customizing
pre-existing database-backed applications rather than building them from
scratch.  An Oracle based version has been around a long time.  (Also be
sure to check out what the people at OpenACS have to say about PostgreSQL
vs. MySQL at 'Why Not MySQL?'
http://openacs.org/philosophy/why-not-mysql.html.)

Chris Gray
Library Systems
University of Waterloo