Example: I have a site running up, and I need to know where my mail is mentioned, so I can edit each object and update the mail. (I think using ZMI)
Go to the Root Folder in the ZMI, click on the "Find" tab. Enter whatever data you have and click on "Find".
Yeah, that works, but I need to search the "SearchableText" property, and the "Find" tool doesn't report all the results I need. However, you all have helped me a lot, and now I have a correctly working ZCatalog, searching the whole site, and returning the path of the objects :-)
To get started please read: http://wiki.zope.org/zope2/ZopeStarter
If you want to build your own application with Zope, you should build your own products that will hold the presentation and "business logic". The instances of those products will be stored in the ZODB and those will contain the content of your application. As someone else already mentioned you can make your content searchable with very little work, by using a ZCatalog and a minimal amount of extra code in your products.
I didn't know about the wiki, very useful.
Is ZMI the right tool to do simple editing?
No. The ZMI is an administrative interface. It's not meant to build end user interfaces upon it.
OK, see below.
Another thought: *If* you are trying to build a content management system, maybe you should consider starting out with one of the existing ones that run on Zope? Configuring / extending that to your needs? They usually come with full text search out of the box - and they already know how to handle all those little pitfalls you will encounter.
You are dead right, I'm digging into Plone too, right now. Thanks Sascha, and all the list, you helped me big time. -- Peppe