About a month ago I had an e-mail exchange with Jimmie Houchin on the comparison between Zope and Enhydra. Since I have his permission, I will repost his message here. Java is an OK language. But it's designed by the corporate, for the corporate. Hung Jung ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hello, I have kept an eye on both Enhydra and Zope for the last year or so, Zope a little longer. Enhydra does have some interesting stuff that Zope does not yet. Enhydra Director which is coming out sometime will bring increased scalability to Enhydra. XMLC does a good job of separating interface from logic. In the end I just unsubscribed from the Enhydra list and am proceeding full speed with Zope. Zope has got a great user community. Enhydra's is much smaller and quieter. I think both Lutris and Digital Creations are good companies. I don't get too excited about Java. I'll use it if I have to, not because I want to. Python I use because I want to. Enhydra/Java to me seems to heavy and too engineered which makes it overly complex for web development. Zope can take a while to learn, but once you understand it, I believe it will make your website development much easier and powerful. After you learn Enhydra, you still have to deal with the complexity of Enhydra/Java. Zope comes with a much richer set of user community functionality. Zope is stronger in delegating responsibilities. I feel that Zope's framework is more ready to plugin into for many types of sites. Enhydra provides a basic set of tools and then you are on your own. If I was to use Enhydra I would have to write many of the functions Zope brings. Browse Enhydra's site and you see very little user contributed material. Browse Zope's and their is much. Two completely different types of communities. Zope's main weakness is performance/scalability. The community is aware of it and so is Digital Creations. Digital Creations has ZEO available commercially for those who need and can afford it. I think Python will improve performance. I think Zope will improve in performance. Hardware continually improves in performance. Currently this is my recipe for a high performing Zope site. "Not tested. Just my theory." Dual processor Zope machine. OS and Apache on one processor. Zope on the other processor. OS, Apache and static content, (images, binaries, etc.) on one hard drive (RAID array, etc.) Zope, ZODB on another hard drive (RAID array, etc.) The above can even be split into two machines if desired allowing for lots of memory for caching content. RDBMS machine Multi-processor machine and high quality RDBMS. Nice hard drive RAID array. With processors reaching 1 ghz, lots of ram, and fast hard drives, I believe a good setup like above can serve a pretty big site. If your site needs more than the above can offer, get ZEO and another machine for another Zope process to plug into your website. The above is probably what I will start out with when I've developed my site. I will be getting my development machine at home in a couple of weeks and then it's off to the races. I look forward to being a contributing member to the Zope community. These are just my personal opinions. I know you emailed me directly, but this message is free to share if you wish. Jimmie Houchin Hung Jung Lu wrote:
Hi,
I read some of your e-mails in the Enhydra mailing list. You seem to be knowledgeable in both. :)
I would like a brief description of the differences between Enhydra and Zope. Enhydra seems to have a smaller group of developers. Given my bad past experience with Java, I am really biased against Java. :) But I would like a more impartial opinion. My experience in Java is that it has too many syntax details you need to worry about before you can do something... development time is a lot slower than Python. Python's running-also-means-compiling model is really neat: you can have the server program running, modify part of its codes and reload the module dynamically without stopping the main program. When I was programming in Java, it was very frustrating that you had to implement all the features of an interface before you can get a feedback... Python gives you immediate feedback right away. Well, Java needs an IDE, and at the time I was programming in Java, Visual Cafe was still really really bad. I would say jumping into Java's bandwagon was a huge mistake on the part of previous company I was working for, and as a result the company had to cancel our Java projects and it wasted about two years development time at an average of 3 programmers. The previous place I worked for was a multimedia company, and in that circle many companies jumped onto Java but most have had non-rewarding experience. And lately I just feel like Java hype is really subsiding. The overhead of starting to write something is Java is just too heavy.
I don't know anything in Enhydra. But in Zope, there is minimal coding in Python. Matter of fact, for simple sites there is almost no need for traditional programming. The basic dynamic functionalities are embedded inside the HTML-like documents.
Here is a message from the Zope mailing list.
tony rossignol <tony-@ep.newtimes.com> wrote: original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/zope/?start=26002
After looking at both Zope and Enhydra I concluded for my purposes that they really fit into two very different realms. Both tools (applications, application interfaces, whatever you want to call them) fit the bill for developing web applications. Both tools provide for HTML/XML markup to easily integrate with web designers.
Enhydra deviates from here to be more consultant/development driven with its class file delivery/deployment method. Where as Zope continues, it provides an interactive management model, where the web designer can update an application and extent it without having to have development support, there is no compile phase that needs to be done before deployment.
I believe it depends on what your perspective; If you're more development centric, Enhydra works great. If you have to interface developers and designers on a an ongoing basis and want to deligate more control to designers Zope is the winner.
Well thats my 2 cents.
Anyway, I would like some more impartial opinion, since myself is kind of biased. :) Any comment would be greatly appreciated.
I think that it is kind of surprising that neither in the Zope mailing list nor in the Enhydra mailing list there is enough comparison/comments on each other.
Do you think corporates out there are still have the image of Java as a superior language? Do you think Java is there to stay, or is it running into an uncertain future, now? Right now I am developing in Zope, but I would not mind going Java, as long as it pleases outside venture capitalists. :)
regards,
Hung Jung
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