is it alpha software, beta, or can i rely on it for such a project (about 20.000 docs of 1500 signs approx) ?
It is stable, but as it is not packed up nicely yet, let's call it a beta.
what are the shortcommings of using *normal* classes (appart from the fact that data.fs is gonna get real big ?
a] does it slow down to a crawl ? b] does it crash, smoke and burn ? c] it is hjust baaaad practive ? d] ?
I guess Zope could handle a lot of data in the ZODB without "crashing, smoking and burning". As far as I know, there just is some limit where the lookup-tables of the ZODB implementation get VERY big. And of course on some older Linuxes you will face the 2 GB-limit (or use multiple mounted storages, which is a bit more complicated than plain out-of-the-box Zope). For what you are planning to do, the limit will be the ZCatalog. You will need it for searching stuff in more than one folder. ZCatalog is getting better, but I still would not completely trust it for very large amounts of data. Joachim.