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server capabilities
by Tom Deprez 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Hi, I'm asking you web-gurus for some information concerning the 'capabilities' for a server. I'm at the stage of buying a new PC for Zope and a Database. This PC will be used for the intranet and will contain Linux, Zope and the Database. Other users will be capable of accessing Zope through browser over the intranet. My question is: what capabilities does this PC needs? what advice can you give concerning the processor, memory (how much?), Hard disk (how much? SCSI/IDE?) All advice is welcome!!! Thanks in advance. Tom.

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FW: [Zope] _Very Long_ Giving up in frustration
by Hadar Pedhazur 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

I am forwarding this with Brad's permission. It's long, but it is instructive as well. The real point (to me) is that each new user in Zope-land has a unique interest/need to get a particular part of Zope's stuff going for them. In Brad's case it was updating and inserting in ZSQL Methods. This created what I hope was a healthy discussion/admission regarding the current state of documentation, and a variety of things that can and should be done to correct that. Again, I thank Brad for opening up this discussion, and for allowing me to forward this email. P.S. If anyone has good working examples of updating database records using ZSQL Methods, don't be shy, they will be much appreciated (at least by one person on this list :-). -----Original Message----- From: Bradford Hull [mailto:brad@tera.com] Sent: Monday, August 16, 1999 5:40 PM To: Hadar Pedhazur Subject: Re: [Zope] Giving up in frustration > Bradford wrote: > > This is unusual, I realize, but I'm going to tell you why > > I'm giving up on Zope now. > > [I'm snipping most of your post, because you say the cogent > part above, and follow it up with a plea for better > documentation]. > > I am very sorry to see you go. We all understand and feel > for your frustration. We hate to lose even a single person > because of a stupid reason like this, but alas, it is a > chicken and egg problem. We are building a large and complex > system, all at our own risk. We give it away, and support > the hell out of it, and yes, documentation lags (sometimes > too much). I understand documentation lagging; you're getting great stuff accomplished. From my example, though, you can see that the documentation is also necessary to succeed to the degree you deserve. > > However, there are a few questions that I would appreciate > you responding to before you disappear forever. Since you > saw the promise of Zope, perhaps you could spare a few last > minutes to help us understand some of the problems. I'll key > most of my questions off your next question (remember, I > deleted an awful lot in between...). > > > People! Write some getting-started documentation! Write > > an FAQ file! > > Did you find the FAQ at http://zdp.zope.org ? If not, why > not? Was the ZDP effort too hidden? > The FAQ file did not come close to the area where I was going mad with frustration. I wanted to be able to present data, which is covered well and thoroughly. I am also responsible for making methods available to collect and maintain the data, and no hint on where to start appeared anywhere. ZSQL methods seemed to clearly only allow "select" statements; when I put in an update, insert or delete, they made a big ugly mess with error returns. After I asked for help, a couple kind souls told me they work anyway. In the 2.0 beta, if I refer to one from dtml, they put up their little generated dtml screen after mine and re-require the data I already gave them, and then I have not been able to verify that it actually got in the database. Thus, I have spent 3 times as long as I have ever had to on any other system, memorizing all available info, and can't update or insert or delete a single row in a single-column file. The FAQ was not obvious enough, in my opinion, but it's sort of slight right now anyway. What I'd like to see is some place the basic assumptions are answered. When I install Zope I am installing probably 35 directories. Then the documentation says to add Extensions to the Zope directory. There are a _lot_ of ways to interpret that. > You were specifically interested in External Methods, and in > Z SQL Methods. Do you feel that this should be covered in > "getting-started documentation"? Can't 99% of Zope users > safely ignore the concept of External Methods? > It looks like that might be true, but in my search for any kind of clue about how to update database fields, it looked like the only thing that had not been ruled out, since ZSQL had so efficiently convinced me it would only do select statements. > Online on Zope.org, is the following: > > "To use an External Method, you need to place your Python > source code file in the 'Extensions' directory in of your > Zope directory (you may need to create this directory), or > in an Extensions directory inside a Product directory, > e.g. lib/python/Products/MyProduct/Extensions." > > You complained that you didn't know what directory the > "Extensions" directory should be created in. You got your > answer by asking the list. Was the documentation so far off > that you couldn't have suggested (via the Collector, ZDP, an > email to info(a)digicool.com, support(a)digicool.com, etc.), > that this simple additional one-liner be added to the > documentation? > > (Whoops, I see some grammatical errors in our online docs > too...) > We need more than a one liner to make up for there being no bread crumbs anywhere for somebody to follow that wants to update their data. You should put in a chapter in the dtml book and at least a page in the ZSQL guide indicating the things I needed to know and could not find. At least, I'm assuming they're there; the help I got was credible, even if the results were disappointing. > > And for God's sake, don't write a patronizing letter about > > "Does Tera have money to spend?" to a person who's trying > > to evaluate whether something is worth spending money > > on... > > You are correct. That's not the correct answer for your > problem. However, do you begrudge us the opportunity to stay > in business at least long enough to get the docs right? I > hope not. Most of the answers relating to "Pay Digital to do > it" relate to people who are looking for additional features > in Zope. Since Zope is pretty powerful already, and we > constantly add new stuff to the free base anyway, individual > desires can and should be supplemented by paying customers > (at least IMHO). > I'd like to spend money supporting the company that makes something this promising, but I have to have a case I can take to my management. Any client that comes with money will first have to have figured out how to do enough to realize Zope's potential; I just saw it without being able to use it because this whole effort is so much like things I have tried to do in the past. > Today, it's Monday. As recently as Friday, you wrote: > > > I'll be delighted to help make documentation improvements, > > because if it is this great, it deserves to be useable by > > everybody. Frankly, the documentation as it stands is > > great marketing material, but maddening if you want to > > insert and update data in a database, or indeed add/update > > data at all. > > I guess you thought better of helping the community (and > yourself) out over the weekend. Too bad. Someone with your > qualities: > > "I'm experienced, quick-witted, hard-working, dogged and > persistent." > > could have added a laser-like focus to the sections that > most need updating. > I can only document things I can figure out; otherwise, I'd be doggedly writing for you. In fact, if my rant gets me enough hopeful looking information, I'll probably install zope at home and fight through this impasse in my spare time so I can help with this; I hate to give up on such a good idea. I want you to succeed, and to make money, as I said, I just couldn't spend the time at work when I'm only hitting barriers, and never any clear sailing. > (giving-up-wistfully-and-will-check-back-regularly)-ly yours, > > I hope so. And again, if you can take a few more minutes to > answer some of the above questions, I know that I will > personally be grateful to you, and I suspect so will the > rest of Digital Creations. > > Thanks again for taking a look at Zope. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings after all the great work you've done. It's a thing I often end up doing: pointing out the other thing you also have to do. Makes me unpopular in church committees. I suppose that must be why I do it :-) You folks are going to be rich if you don't die of stress, I'm convinced - this idea is the right thing at the right time. I'll probably be back on the bandwagon in a couple of months. If you'll tell me how to hook a ZSQL method for insert/update to dtml, I'll jump back on now and start that chapter. I'm not busy tonight... -- Bradford K. Hull | Do not be fanatical in your dedication to reason. brad(a)tera.com | Anne Rice, "Pandora" (206)701-2066 |

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Re: [Zope] FYI: Searching the mailing lists
by Alastair Burt 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Anthony Pfrunder <s341625(a)student.uq.edu.au> writes: > The Zope mailing list is fully searchable at egroups. Simply go to: > > http://www.egroups.com/group/zope > > And sign up ;) Does this actually work? Yesterday, I tried searching for "+zcatalog +tutorial". It returned no matches. Yet the announcement for ZCatalog[1] clearly contained both strings [2]. --- Alastair Footnotes: [1] http://www.egroups.com/group/zope/6977.html? [2] The tutorial for ZCatalog can actually be found in http://www.zope.org/Download/ZCatalog, even though ZCatalog is now part of the Zope beta distribution and you no longer need to go to that page to download it. As someone else has pointed out, it is not so much that the documentation does not exist but that you have to be quite resourceful to find it.

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Re: [Zope] PHP-Syntax
by Anthony Baxter 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

>>> Ulrich Steinkopf wrote > > I dont like the SSI-like syntax of Zope. Is there any possibility to use > another Syntax, for instance PHP? As of Zope2, the SSI-like syntax is deprecated in favour of the newer <dtml- > syntax, e.g. (off the top of my head) <dtml-if foobar> <dtml-in listObject> something </dtml-in> </dtml-if> Anthony, who has way, way too much code that still uses the old style - hm, need to write a "update my DTML for me" thingy.

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Newbie question: Directory for publishing Python modules?
by Mike Fletcher 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

I'm an olden-days Bobo user who's looking at maybe using Zope for a research project. I downloaded the latest sources, read the faqs, the discussion list archives, the WebSite, the online documentation etc. I have been tracing through the modules call by call trying to figure out this simple question for about 5 hours now. It seems that there's an assumption I'm missing, and some piece of magic I have not yet found: What path is used to determine the list of callable modules under Zope + ZServer? It isn't the Pythonpath returned from the medusa monitor (thank-goodness, that has every python source tree on my computer). It doesn't _appear_ to be anything inside the Zope directory tree (I don't see anything that would make sense as a root publishing directory). When I debug-print the code, I find that publish_module doesn't seem to get called for the modules I'm passing as arguments (though "Zope" does get passed). More prosaically: Where do I put my python modules to get them published in the root namespace? With the old Bobo, I was just putting the modules in my web-server's cgi-bin directory (with a wrapper). Nothing in the documentation suggests where the equivalent directory would be for Zope. I've already figured out how to replace the XML RPC with a high-performance multiple-query binary connection (which I had thought was going to be most of the work this evening, but took only about 10 minutes), but this ridiculously simple task has stopped me cold. Well, hints appreciated, I would rather not have to write my own object database, access control managers etc. because of such a silly problem. Mike ______________________________________ M i k e C . F l e t c h e r mcfletch(a)vrtelecom.com Designer, Researcher

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PHP-Syntax
by Ulrich Steinkopf 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

I dont like the SSI-like syntax of Zope. Is there any possibility to use another Syntax, for instance PHP? tia Uli -- Ulrich Steinkopf ulrich.steinkopf(a)debis.com

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Zope FAQ
by Tony McDonald 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Just a heads up to let people know that there *is* a FAQ available on Zope at http://zdp.zope.org/FAQ It's got lots of stuff that's useful to newbies and tech-heads alike...mainly Zope 1.10, but the principles apply to Zope2.0 as well hth tone out. ------ Dr Tony McDonald, FMCC, Networked Learning Environments Project http://nle.ncl.ac.uk/ The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 222 5888 Fingerprint: 3450 876D FA41 B926 D3DD F8C3 F2D0 C3B9 8B38 18A2

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Documentation
by Stephan Richter 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Hey Zopsters, Here are some lines and an analysis of the Documentation problem as I observed it: The Problem: --------- I was talking to Brad Hull last week and he was very excited about Zope. It is now up to us to find out how he would write an E-Mail titled: Giving up in Frustration. The problem is not, that the information is out there (in the community), but the information is in the people's head and not on paper or in a file. That is the real problem. The Solution: --------- The solution is to transfer (download?) the knowledge from the Zopster's heads down into screen and print media. Together we can make it happen. One guy certainly cannot do the documentation himself. How do we bring the solution to reality? I wrote a rather lengthy letter to Paul Everitt this weekend.describing some of the tools which could help us to do this. For example I suggested to have a FAQ that is built by the community, by providing the Zopsters tools to add questions and answers directly to the FAQ. This way the editor only needs to check for grammar and spelling in the FAQs. Another way would be to build some kind of Reference Manual, which lists all DTML tags, Products, DB Adapters and other objects. The community can then add descriptions and attributes, methods and so on to make the Reference complete. When and how to Start: ---------------- We need to start now. I would be willing to take the task of developing a tool that will allow us to create FAQs and the Reference manual. I appreciate any help I can get by providing me with comments and suggestions of how the tool should look like and how it should perform. If anyone wants to share the effort with me PLEASE contact me. If Digital Creations already started a tool like that please contact me also. Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter iXL - Software Designer and Engineer

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Q: KM|News, Squishdot or roll your own Zclasses (and future compatibility)
by Samu Mielonen 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Hello, I've been reading this list for about month and a half now (plus backlogs) and I can say that if it wasn't for this list, I would have abandoned all hope long ago (don't get me started on documentation :) Anyway, I have a following design problem that I'm unable to solve by myself: I'm trying to build a distributed content editing and publishing site, to which content writers can log in, write in their stories and have editors edit/approve them for publication. Now, I'm thinking that my data is basically mostly flat-file or object-based (i.e. non-relational), thus I have chosen to abandon SQL-databases as my storage. This means using the Zope object storage to store everything. NOw, there are a couple of promising alpha products out there (Squishdot and KM|News) that both do some of the things I want to. I'm afraid I'm not so adept at Python as to start combining them myself, so I have to choose either or for my task. The third possibility would do it all by DTML and roll my own Zclasses to represent different article classes (this *looks* straightforward enough). My question is: if I choose either of the products, how do they store their articles, how do they keep references to those articles and if I (at a later date) decide to change the product I use, can I still keep accessing those old articles with my new product? Let me give you an example (totally hypothetical): 1. I install Squishdot on Zope2.0 and build/run my site on that 2. Squishdot stores articles in it's own way and in X amount of time I will have, say 600 articles 3. I grow out of Squishdot, learn the magic of Zope and roll my own mega-publication product. 4. I now have a new implementation that stores slightly modified article objects in a new storage using Zope (i.e. still not using relational DB). ?. How do I access the Squishdot articles? Do I still have to run use and hook into the Squishot product or can I somehow access them from my own code with even having Squishdot installed? ?. What about if I originally chose KM|News, how do I access them? I know the above questions probably already contain some fundamental misunderstandings of Zope, but I'm afraid this is as far as I've been able to get by myself. To be quite honest, the whole idea of how Zope stores, references, deletes, fetches and searches objects is extremely vague to me. So, if you have any opinions, facts or even speculations about above, please let me know. I'm starting to think my brain is swelling from too much speculation of my own :) Best regards, Samu Mielonen PS If you need help with the documentation effort and can find work for a Zope newbie, I'm all for it. -- "Zone of proximal development - ...the conceptual space or zone between what a [human] is capable of doing on his or her own and what [he/she] can achieve with assistance from ... a more capable peer." - The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology

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RE: [Zope] Giving up in frustration
by Paul Everitt 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

Joe wrote: > I believe the zope community is astoundingly good at > answering questions > intelligently, just bunches of questions can go unanswered and there > doesn't seem to be a faq good enough to eliminate the need for basic > questions. Perhaps if we can translate some of the expounded list > knowledge into faq material, zope startup will be all that > much easier. This is one of the greatest tragedies of all. Fantastic amounts of wisdom float by on the list every day and get lost. I suggest that this discussion is better served on the ZDP list (zdp(a)zope.org) --Paul Paul Everitt Digital Creations paul(a)digicool.com 540.371.6909 ----------------------------------------- The Open Source Zope application server http://www.zope.org/

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