[ale] Anyone here use Zope?

[hirsch at zapmedia.com]

Christopher Bergeron writes:
 > I've been hearing a lot about it lately, and I'm wondering if anyone 'round
 > here has used/uses it.  It looks very promising for web development, but I'd
 > like some opinions before I dive into it.
 > 
 > Anyone use it?  Suggestions / comments?

Yeah, we used it quite a bit here at ZapMedia.  My impression is that
it is great for small sites, but it is not ready for a major
application yet.

Specifically, python has serious problems with its threading--it
doesn't really support native threads and so if you have I/O bound
applications performance will suffer.  Zope uses lots of threads, and
until the DB is all in ram, performance will be very bad.

That brings up the second issue.  Zope is not sell suited to server a
large database.  Zope "aggressivly caches" the DB, i.e. the cache
grows and doesn't shrink.  If your active DB fits in RAM, that is
okay.  Once it is all in RAM performance will be okay (not good, just
okay), but it won't scale very well.  If you have a 2 gig db you need
2 gig of RAM, etc.

Finally, it is difficult to use normal code control practices.  Zope
does not play particularly well with the standard file-centric methods
most developers are used to.  Zope wants to keep all the files in its
database, and loading them from a repository gets pretty convoluted.

It was my original suggestion that we use Zope, and Python ranks near
the top in my list of favorite languages, so I am prejudiced in its
favor.  Seeing the results of my suggestion (without doing any of the
actual work, but talking a lot to people who did) I would say that
Zope is not mature enough for the task we set for it.  I really like
the OO approach, and think Zope has some really elegant features.  The
Zope Template system does a really good job of separating code from
appearance and the inheritance scheme (acquisition) is very slick.  It
is neat, though somewhat painful, that you can manage your site
completely through your browser.  I still might consider Zope for a
small application, but not for a large, industrial size, mission
critical one.

-- 
------------------------
Michael D. Hirsch, Ph.D.
Software Developer
ZapMedia

Phone: 678-420-2722                FAX: 678-420-5839
email: michael.hirsch at zapmedia.com Web: http://www.zapmedia.com

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