----- Original Message ----- Message: 5 From: Patrick Phalen <zope@teleo.net> Organization: TeleoNet To: zope@zope.org Subject: Re: [Zope] Zope vs. ColdFusion for e-commerce development Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 12:32:48 -0800 You might want to take a look at: http://webdevelopersjournal.com/software/coldfusion_problems.html You know I had the same exact problems as the gentleman above, and it was nerve-wracking. We ran the servers on two Sun Solaris boxes each with 1 gig of RAM, and ColdFusion would crash so often it was not funny. He is not kidding that 6 or 7 coredumps a day was not bad. That is actually a *VERY* good day for Coldfusion. Don't even talk to me about support, they are a bunch of know-nothing,do-nothings. I ended up knowing more about CF than the tech support did by the time they came up with any answers, and I could only get answers from the Lead Engineer himself after my CEO got on the phone with their CEO and started threatening lawsuits. I still don't know why ColdFusion crashes and restarts so much, and the worst part is, *neither does Allaire*! BTW, ColdFusion was actually ported to Solaris FROM Windows NT, so it has to run a Windows Registry Emulator in order to work! Hah! [Ben Galbraith, on Tue, 09 Nov 1999]: :: :: Zope Folks, :: :: I'm with a new e-commerce startup and we're currently evaluating the development tools we'll be using to create our website. The platform will either be Sun hardware running Solaris 7/Apache, or Intel/Linux boxes. :: :: We initially evaluated four solutions: mod_perl, PHP (using Apache module support), ColdFusion, and Zope. We've eliminated mod_perl because of maintenance nightmares, PHP because, well, we just did, and now we're down to ColdFusion and Zope. Initially I favored Zope, but there are a few concerns I have about it. :: :: First off, the size of the ColdFusion development pool and it's development history suggest greater stability and a more mature feature set. Second, it seems that ColdFusion offers all the functionality that Zope does and then some. Third, ColdFusion seems to offer similiar performance. Fourth, the database connectivity seems to be equal to Zope's. Fifth, their tag-based programming language seems to offer equivalent functionality to Zope's. Sixth, I can find more ColdFusion developers than I can shake a stick at, but I have to explain to everyone I meet what Zope is. If you are not on Win NT, I strongly discourage using ColdFusion (at least version 4.0 and 4.01) for any site of appreciable size. I found tech. support to be hideous. The best bets are the Allaire Support Forums, since their are a lot of developers who will probably be having the same problems as you, however its hard to get real conclusive answers from Allaire themselves about bugs. I gotta admit that the CFML language is really easy to learn, however it doesn't have very good inheritance structure like Zope does, it uses an INCLUDE statement a la C which can get quite confusing once you start to create multiple levels of includes. :: So, as my lack of information leads me to believe, there are only two drawbacks to ColdFusion as compared to Zope: (1) I have to pay $3.5k for each license, and (2) Zope has a superior model for delegating ownership to different people for the website. Not worth the price. I wouldn't buy CF for Unix if it was $5 bux a pop. My company has payed through the nose due to problems with CF that greatly outweight the $3000 that we paid for it. If you want a good, stable application server for UNIX get Vignette StoryServer or Netscape Application Server. If you want a cheaper alternative, go for Zope or PHP. :: Could you correct any misconceptions I have and explain to me why I should choose Zope over ColdFusion? I want to select the tool by Wed. or Thurs., so a quick reply would be appreciated. :: :: Thanks! :: :: Ben ::