From: "Raymond Norton" <ray@lctn.k12.mn.us>
The answer came back to use Zope. Before I spend a bunch of time on this I would like to know if this is the right tool , and how in-depth of an understanding I will need to produce such a thing.
It' probably the right tool. It almost always is. :-) Zope does have a rather steep lurning cuve, but it's worth it. Don't give up yet. :-) From: "flynt" <flynt@gmx.ch>
For experimenting with databases you even have the possibilty to play with *Gadfly*, a relational test-database which comes with your Zope distribution. Gadfly does only exist in memory, nothing is written on disk and so it is a quick and good learning tool. Database adapters are available then for all major databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, ODBC and so on.
Pleas note that you don't need to use any of these to make a database with Zope. Unless you need to store things in a relational database just store the data within the Zope objects, and index them with the ZCatalog. No need to impose the restrictions of relational data unelss you have to. :-)