June 2001 - Zope - Zope lists

Zcatalog bloat problem (berkeleydb is a solution?)
by Giovanni Maruzzelli 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

Hello Zopistas, we are developing a Zope 2.3.3 (py 1.5.2) application that will add, index and reindex some tens of thousands objects (Zclass that are DTMLDocument on steroids) on some twenty properties each day, while the absolute number of objects cataloged keeps growing (think at content management for a big portal, where each day lots of content are added and modified and all the old content remains as a searchable archive and as material to recycle in the future). This seems for some aspects a task similar to what Erik Enge impacted couple a weeks ago. We first derived from CatalogAware, then switched to manage ourselves the cataloging - uncataloging - recataloging. The ZODB still bloat at a too much fast pace. ***Maybe there's something obvious we missed***, but when you have some 4thousands object in the catalog, if you add and catalog one more object the ZODB grows circa a couple of megabyte (while the object is some 1 k of text, and some twelve boolean and datetime and strings properties). If we pack the ZODB, Data.fs returns to an almost normal size (so the bloat are made by the transactions as tranalyzer.py confirms). Any hints on how to manage something like? We use both textindexes, fieldindexes, and keywordsindexes (textindex on string properties, fieldindexes on boolean and datetime, keywordindex on strings). Maybe one kind of indexes is to be avoided? Erik, any toughts? We are almost decided to switch to berkeleydb storage (the Minimal one) to get rid of the bloating, we are testing with it, but it seems to be discontinued because of a lack of requests. Any light on it? Is it production grade? -giovanni

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zope design pattern type question
by Gary Poster 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

Hi everyone. I'm a Zope newbie who, after reading the zope book and the developer's guide, has a design pattern type question. I'm sure this has been dealt with before--my approach to this type of problem for 4+ years now has been RDBMS-based, and I'm having trouble coming up with a graceful ODB/Zope equivalency. The basic question is, "what's the best Zope/ODB equivalency to a many-to-many relationship such as one implements via a join table in RDBs?" Now I'll elaborate, but that's the heart of it. Let's say we're implementing the standard tutorial RDB book database project in Zope/ODB. In one example of what I'm talking about you have objects that represent authors in one branch of the ODB, an author collection, and you have objects that represent books in another branch, a book collection. The books might have an ordered list of author objects to represent authors of that book. The book object can now easily report who its authors are. However, the author objects, as found normally in another branch of the ODB, have a much more annoying time reporting the books they have authored--they might have to query the book collection, for instance, which lacks grace to me. But that's the only solution I can come up with. Similarly, should I store a reference to the actual author object in the book object's author list, or to an acquisition-"wrapped" version of the author? The wrapped version seems both more powerful and more dangerous, and I'm not even sure if the wrapping would survive putting it in the ZODB. Finally, can I use zcatalog with the field indexing to speed up looking for the authors in the book collection, or is zcatalog really only for text? Thanks in advance. If there's a how-to on this just point away, or if there's some specific source code example that would help me out, that would be cool too. Gary

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add LocalFS with dtml
by a.pahne＠t-online.de 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

There has been the same question on the list a while ago, but unfortunatly it hasn't been answered yet: Is <dtml-call "manage_addLocalFS('LocalFS', 'This is the title', '/var/path/to/local/dir')"> broken? I can add a LocalFS object with the management interface, but I cannot with dtml. Andy

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Re: [Zope] A Tale from IBM land...
by Oliver Bleutgen 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 02:59:27PM +0200, Peter Bengtsson wrote: >> > Finally, on buzzwords, I'd say go easy on Python. It scares >> > people. Say Perl, say XML, say any other ML. Who cares what >> > BroadVision is written in? Why should we care with Zope? >> > (someone is going to hate that). >> > ....Mike >> >> I disagree. >> Zope is very different from the others in this respect. >> Python is such a big part of Zope. You could almost say: "a bunch or >> prepared classes and libraries written in Python, and it even has a HTML >> end >> to it. The collection of these frameworks is called ZOPE" >> And Python is definitly something to be proud of these days. > depends on where your marketing focus is. if you're pitching the > technical staff, the fact that zope is a python application _can_ > be a big plus, if you're pitching the non-technical decision > makers (see my earlier posts) then talking python _can_ muddy the > waters. the suits are buying solutions, not programming languages > so the fact that zope is a python 'killer app' means you have to > sell not only zope as a solution, but now python as well, double > the sales effort... I hope you people don't mind if I repeat myself, but the above is really the point. Talking python, OOP, TAL, ZPT, CMF, zclasses and whatnot is very often _not_ a good idea with decision makers as a target. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/cmserver/ (btw. does anybody know this product?, on a quick glance, it seems to be something like Zope+CMF+ZIEMethod.) Take the tour, http://www.microsoft.com/cmserver/evaluation/tour.htm What we see there is exactly what I meant my previous lengthy mail. _No_ technical information, but some small flash animations of cursors doing drag&drop, pictures of nice people who look like they really love their life now that they can use this product. Andy McKay wrote about the art of presenting zope (to a LUG!): "I would recommend just showing a lot of Zope and an application. I made the mistake recently of talking too much and only having 5 mins to show stuff. I installed Squishdot from a tar file, right there and then and compared it too installing Slashcode. That impressed people alot more than the waffle I did." This is true even more if not talking to linuxheads. People need pictures they can understand. cheers, oliver

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RE: [Zope] A Tale from IBM land...
by Farrell, Troy 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

That's (kinda) how I started using zope. I was told to build a system using Access. I knew nothing about Access, but I knew SQL. Then it needed to be web-enabled. I didn't have the cash for NTServer/IIS/ASP, and I know linux, so I started looking at Opensource stuffs that could talk to Access. I looked at PHP, but it confused me (even with my Perl/C background), and Zope had ZODBC and ZSQL methods. I wrote my first app in DTML and SQL on Access. Then I discovered ZClasses. Then Python Products. There's no stopping me know.(though I haven't yet looked at the catalog :S) Since then, I've moved the site over to HP/UX and PostgreSQL to handle the heavier load. I write for a group of 20 users in a small intranet environment FWIW. Troy -----Original Message----- From: Andy McKay [mailto:andym@ActiveState.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 10:51 AM To: Charlie Blanchard; zope(a)zope.org Subject: Re: [Zope] A Tale from IBM land... > > from the existing M$ shop that they now are (VB, Access, > > SQLserver) and that the staff will have to learn something > > different, he wants thier 'buy in' and feels that to do so they But they could keep a lot of stuff in SQLServer and Access and connect using ODBC. Using a mix of familiar tools and practices makes the transition easier. I hear of people starting off this route and then moving more and more to Zope. Cheers. -- Andy McKay. _______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope(a)zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )

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newbi with stupid question alert (squishdot)
by Mat Braddy 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

Afternoon Zopers, I have only been using Zope for the past week but i am gettin on OK for a webdesigner. I am using Squishdot to build a content site and havent had much response from asking stupid questions on the squish mailing list so hope u lot might be able to help 8) basically i want to be able to stick <img> and <a href> tags in atrticles on my squishdot site. i have tried looking thru the python directory at the stripogram.py files etc but as i am not a coder I haven't a clue where to tweak the files to allow these 2 tags. can anyone elp? ta!! mat.

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zope and non-undoable db
by Jason Byron 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

We see some products that use the file system, or ram instead of the object database because of the problems they have with multiple entries on highly active objects. Specifically the fact that it keeps appending changes to allow for undos. I've heard of being able to setup the database to be non-undoable. I think this is a key part to zeo setups. Is it possible to have zope come standard with two databases, one undoable one not, or perhaps to include code in the the current db that can flag data as 'highly active' and not provide the undo feature for that particular object or folder? Or, is this something that has always been available and I simply haven't known about it? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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Z Oracle Database Connections
by John Wormington 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

I have a question about Z Oracle Database Connections. I am the unhappy owner of a new responsibility of maintaining an existing install of Zope. Originally it was working fine and now the connections drop one by one and will not come back up. Through a manage screen I can see that the connection is closed. I can click on the Open Connection button but it errors. The error is as follows: ******************************** Your action caused an unknown error to occur. <!-- Error Type: BadRequest Traceback: Traceback (innermost last): File /mnt/disk1/Z1/Z3/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py, line 171, in publish File /mnt/disk1/Z1/Z3/lib/python/ZPublisher/mapply.py, line 160, in mapply (Object: manage_open_connection) File /mnt/disk1/Z1/Z3/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py, line 112, in call_object (Object: manage_open_connection) File /mnt/disk1/Z1/Z3/lib/python/Shared/DC/ZRDB/Connection.py, line 220, in manage_open_connection (Object: RoleManager) File /mnt/disk1/Z1/Z3/lib/python/Shared/DC/ZRDB/Connection.py, line 240, in connect (Object: RoleManager) File /mnt/disk1/Z1/Z2/lib/python/Products/ZOracleDA/db.py, line 124, in __init__ File /usr/local/lib/python1.5/site-packages/DCOracle/ocidb.py, line 77, in __init__ BadRequest: <strong>Invalid connection string: </strong><CODE>username/password@server</CODE><br> OracleError (12154, 'ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve service name') ******************************** Now by looking at it I initially thought that it was an oracle problem. However out oracle admin showed me that she could log into that same box and use sqlplus and get data back. I have to now look into how to trouble shoot either ZOracleDA or DCOracle. Has anyone ran into these Database Connection strings suddenly failing? The only luck that I have had was by bouncing the servers they will all come up fine, but then after a matter of minutes they all drop one by one again. The tnsnames.ora file has not changed location and (I hate when people say this because I doubt them) nothing has changed that I am aware of. It just started dropping the connections. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance -John Wormington

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Error Message
by Martin Stötzel 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

Cellion BriefpapierHi guys, does anybody know how to change the error messages in ZOPE? And when is which error message displayed? I have changed the Method "standard_error_message" but still another error message is shown. Hmmm..... When is the standard_error_message displayed and when a different one? And where can I modify all err messages? Hoping for your ZOPE wisdom :-) Martin

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DocumentLibrary (0.4) and PDF file cut-off
by Sedat Yilmazer 26 Jun '01

26 Jun '01

Hi I was playing with the DocumentLibrary (V0.4) and faced with a PDF file indexing problem, complaing about a damanged PDF file Error (0) : PDF file is damaged - attempt to reconstruct xref table Error : Top-level page object is wrong type (null) Error: Couldn't read page catalog I have checked the temp pdf file at /tmp and found out that even the original file is 195579 bytes, the temp file was only 130043 bytes!!! *Exactly 65536 bytes short!!! I have checked the pdf.py and 't look OK I have check the files and they were the same for the first 130043 bytes, but then temp one was cut off. Does anybody have similar experiences? I have Zope-2.3.2 on linux mandrake 8.0 with python-2.0-9 DocumentLibrary 0.4

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