[Zope] - A naive question about browser based applications

13 Jan 1999

      Hi,

  I have one little "niggle" regarding browser based application deployment
  that has been simmering on the back burner for quite a while now.  Now
  that I'm getting ready to get really serious about Zope, et al... I'm
  now wanting to get this answered.

  Scenario:
    Heads down data entry/long session of interactions...

  Questions:

  - As I go from screen to screen to screen (ala panel model of non-active,
    e.g. Java, interaction)... each panel "stacks" on top of the previous,
    right?

  - If so, is there any way to force the browser to "flush" the stack, with
    the side effect, for example, of making the "Back" button on Netscape
    not return to the screen from whence I just came?

    For example, if I go "in" 10 levels, I can then go "Back" the 10
    levels.  If at the 10th level, I did a "commit", and then if I back out
    some number of levels, and then took a different path, or did something
    that thought it could do a "transaction abort" or "rollback" (etc), how
    do I maintain transaction integrity?

  - If there is no way to "flush" the stack, how do I keep the browser's
    URL stack from eventually overflowing?

    Let's say that I expect several hundred, or thousand, or millions, or
    trillions (USA or other) of transactions in a session... (no matter
    what limit you set, I'll claim that I need several times that number of
    interactions... which is easily accomplished in a typical application
    that doesn't nest...)

  What I think I want (in effect) is an interaction model, using Zope, that
  is:

    while not done:
      dowork()

  rather than the stacking of:

    dowork()
      dowork()
        dowork()
	  ...
	    dowork()
	      ...

  from which I can then "Back", "Back", "Back", "Back", "Back"... all the
  way out...

--
Cheers,
	--ldl
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