On 12/05/2011 03:12 PM, Sareesh Sudhakaran wrote:

Hi John and Fernando
Intuitively I feel that my project fits in with an Object DB, which is why I have spent a lot of time trying to understand its methodology. But now I'm more confused than ever.


Sareesh, could you be more specific about what confuses you? You have several routes, you need to give proper consideration to those routes.

Maybe it would also help us if you clarify what is your skillset and experience in software development.

Also, is your problem a CIM one? see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-integrated_manufacturing and specifically the key challenge listed over there. I have the impression you might be underestimating the problem.

Finally, do you already have information about the tools in some electronic format? And what about the rules to choose tools? Is there already some computer based solution to help with the current problem?

Please keep in mind that OOP and Object DB is not the same thing. You can work with objects in Python and never rely on OODB.

I have serious doubts about using ZODB at your stage because AFAIK, creating custom objects requires the development of zope Products. Note that the zope book does not teach you about creating custom objects in the ZODB. You need another whole book for that.

And the combination RDB and ZODB suggested by Neils/John seems too complicated as a start. I think you have a high learning curve ahead of you if have to learn to create Zope Packages to put objects in ZODB. But maybe there are simpler ways that I am not aware of. I'm sure OOP in Python and RDB is a good option. ZODB itself, I'm not so sure. Maybe others can enlighten you better here.

It appears to me you don't have much experience and it looks like there is a long evolutionary project ahead of you. For these reasons, I would highly recommend Python. BTW, I never recommended and I do not recommend C/C++ for your needs, I just mentioned that I used it for a similar purpose many years ago.

I would recommend you to do some programming in Python just to read some tool data from a text file, create some objects and try to do some tool selection where the output is merely done with print.

Then you can upgrade to use MySQL to store your tool data and then you can decide if you go the Zope or the PHP route. Keep in mind that RDBs are a huge standard with many people and tools around it, whereas ZODB is very much a small niche in comparison. That should also weigh in your criteria.

Regards,
Fernando