zeo is the only product I can find listed on digicools site. how about commercial support for zope? by the hour? what if i just wanna buy chunks of functionality from you and hook it onto zope? I see database adapters for 'high-end' databases such as Oracle (8i?), Sybase, and heard DB2 is in works... what about extra pre-built functionality that exploits the data in these databases? does large commercial companies like ishophere.com d/l community products and install them and use them internally? use them in production? what about everyone else?

currently I'm looking for workflows inside an application server -> pre-built: author->editor->publisher workflow but something like siteserver w/ the transaction pipeline- where i can arrange around the 'workflow' of web content. here is what i've come up w/ in few words: spectra (lots of pre-built) has lots of workflows looks like what I want- but it runs on coldfusion :(. vignette has workflows + oodles of other functionality you didnt know you needed and where too stupid to ask (? impression from what little i've read). frontier is complete customized user-talk scripting language- contains few work flow products but it was mentioned somewhere you could custom build them (i couldnt imagine having the option of custom building that). then we have zope, suppose to have a product (?) of some kind coming out soon (but no specifics) and it appears from digicool web site and one time I asked them what they sold they mentioend 'bug collector' and zTables, any ideas of putting that up on your web site? (too much to maintain)?. but there is no formal writings on the web site that digicool would sell you anything except consulting services and training.

another huge criteria is that I'm running the catalog on siteserver currently.. but want to mix in zope as content management (this sounds like perfect application for zope). but Zope cant be used w/ ASP (?is this TRUELY impossible?!. I dont know how it would happen, but i believe a solution must be possible) - which instantly kills it and pretty much every other product - I've looked at: except frontier and maybe vignette (i dont know tcl and alot more developers are geeked up other python than tcl).

(zope.org - i personally like it.. although its getting old, visiting it everyday 8) design (mix of fonts, unsexy graphics, poor navigation -> please make Browse the DTML Reference online here. abit more obvious (documentation page) this should be accented w/ a graphic or much more pronounced text like the .tgz)

and the digicool.com web site only speaks of ZEO, and some open source pdfs, ang lots of press releases. NOTE: I'm sure you would rather spend time developing Zope than the website advertising zope.. but it needs to happen for marketing purposes. not HUGE, simple and slick - roxen has a very nice web site. Its just Zope doesnt seem like a commercial viability. does anyone else get that impression?

anyway- where is Zope going? can we look forward to y2k as the year for 3rd party zope support? w/ digicool putting their seal of approval on canned products? people running Mozilla to interface into 'raw zope environment'? pythonmethods are incredibly neat- now that they are over @ D.C., any news on import :) btw: is there anything on other application servers ANYWHERE AS COOL as pythonmethods? or even pluggable brains?? (this is marketing genius term, btw) or zClasses?!?! how about cheap (?) or not-so-cheap prebuilt ready-to-roll products for zope?

I want to express my utter amazement and appreciation to the Digital Creations programming team for coming up with this gem. once its abit more polished - i couldnt imagine it NOT being embraced by a majority of web development houses.

and Ive yet to see any performance numbers? I dont know much about benchmarking zope- I have some webload software at work where i can get some performance numbers and post them back to the web site. I know that statistics can be bent to speak any 'truth' but this is only way I know to see how well zope does do in artifically 'stressed environment' - I work w/ a client that get ~10-15 million requests a day, I just dont think zope could keep up w/ that.. I'm most likely very wrong.. but you wouldnt know it by looking on the web site, honestly). I would imagine ishophere ran ~1 million requests/day - its not running too terribly many requests directly through, no?