Hi, I am in the process of evaluating the best architecture for a new Internet-based service that we are going to offer to the Japanese market. I would like to evaluate Zope, and I want your opinions on whether Zope as a solution is adequate, competitive, or the best one available.
From my perspective, I am a firm believer that Python is a great language, and very efficient to build and maintain, and that Zope will also enjoy a bright future. But they are not as widely accepted as Java servlets / JSP / EJB on the web server backend. So I may have to work to convince the CEO that we should go against the industry on this matter, and any information you could provide would be helpful.
One important point is that the interface will be all in Japanese. Please confirm that Zope can handle Unicode and / or other 2-byte character sets. The application will be designed for a financial industry to handle transactions between independent agents and their providers. The agents will get multiple quotations from multiple providers, while entering the customer data only once into our service. The functionality looks something like this. 1. The agent inputs about 100 pieces of data for the customer into our system. The exact data will vary, depending on specific product. We will store this information into our database. 2. The agent will choose several providers from a list. 3. The system will (mostly likely) use XML to send the customer data to the chosen providers. The providers will return to us pricing and some description of the product. 4. We will aggregate the quotations and present this to the agent. The agent will choose a few of the quotations to present to the customer. The agent will refresh the view, and print it for the customer. 5. If the customer chooses one of the products, the agent will enter the order to the system. Since the customer data is already there, we only need to pass a short XML message to the provider. 6. Our system will also have to track some information like which agents can use which providers, as well as commission rates. 7. We will also provide some sales automation functionality to the agents, but the exact details depends on the segment of the agent market we go after. Some examples might include calculating commission rates, querying customer birthdays to remind the agent to send them a card, etc. In general our server will not provide that much processing of the customer data, either during or after the transaction. Mostly we are saving it and passing it between the agents and the providers. However this data does need to be encrypted over SSL. I think we could do the SSL encryption on an edge device, but I would be curious to find out how others have handled this with Zope. I would like the list to help me with the following. - How suitable is Zope for this type of application? - What is a common back-end data storage for Zope in this type of application. - We need scaleability and redundancy. How suitable is Zope for this? - Any other comments or questions. Best regards - g -- These || G. Alan Tucker || Failure is not an option. . . Opinions || Tokyo, Japan || Are My Own || tuckerg@acm.org || It comes standard with Windows