Ok ... don't laugh (too hard) yet. I know this sounds of blasphemy but let me explain. I spent many years as a meteorologist in the Navy. One tool that would have been invaluable to me (to provide better predictions and warning capabilities) is an expert system. I am sure NOAA probably has one but the Navy doesn't. And they are the ones that would benefit from such a system the most because their forecasting responsibilities are global in nature where NOAA has a much smaller yard to watch over. I have pondered how to build such a system for over 10 years. Things began to fall into place this year when I stumbled upon Zope and when the Navy decided to get serious about Web Services. I like Python ... but I don't think (as a scripting language) it is up to the challenge of an expert system. A language that I feel is up to the challenge is Eiffel (especially in conjunction with ISE EiffelStudio .. an awesome modeling and development environment). So a question for the Zope guru's out there. Since Python is such an adept "glue language" and Eiffel systems are distributed as C-packages, from a technical perspective, would it be absurd to develop the system in Eiffel and integrate it into Zope as a product (or better yet a Web Service in the future). Am I way off base here ? Or am I wrong about my assessment of Python's ability to build an expert system ? Thanks (in advance) for any insight...