Andreas Jung wrote:
Zope supports the export of content either through Python pickles (.zexp) or as XML. Unfortunatly the XML export/import has several problems:
- the generated XML is pretty much too low-level to use it e.g. for migration issues
I have been working on a Zope 2 project lately and have found XML export to be extremely usable. Templates and other large strings are enclosed in CDATA sections, which make them surprisingly readable. We've had sucess writing XSLT templates to transform the pickle data into formats easily parsable for particular applications.
- it was broken multiple times in the past, it still has problems
How so?
- it has no maintainer, nobody wants to touch it without gloves
Is that any more true than for lots of other things?
I propose to deprecate XML export/import for Zope 2.10 and to remove it in Zope 2.12. We don't loose any functionality since .zexp is working fine. I don't know of any active projects/code that really uses XML export/import.
Comments?
-1 As I said above, I've been finding it surprisingly useful lately. When I first wrote it, I viewed it as someowhat of an academic exercise, but I've come to realize that it is far more useful than I originally thought. This is more so now that XSLT is widely used and quite capable of transforming the pickles into useful forms. Note that, IMO, there isn't likely to be a more generally useful form because usefullness is generally determined by a particular application. XSLT + XML pickles together provide a general mechanism that can adapt to particular application needs. I think the XML export is a facility that is and should be advertized as a legitimate escape hatch for data kept in Zope. People really shouldn't feel afraid of putting data in Zope/ZODB as there really is a useful way to get it out. Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@zope.com Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org