Hello!
The ZCatalog doesn't generally index relational data. Its usually used to index things in the ZODB.
There are so many questions and problems and deficiencies about ZCatalog. Think for example I want to index a site on bobobase_modification_time and search for date ranges. Impossible! ZCatalog does not have ranges. Recently added textindex_operator allows to use "and", "near", "andnot", "or" operators, but it is insufficient. I can only use the operator for one index. What if I want to search for "title LIKE '%ZOPE% OR body LIKE '%python%'"? Alas! Developing special SQL-like language for ZCatalog? It is hard. What than? A crazy idea sprang into my mind. What if I, the site programmer, could provide a callback function, and ZCatalog will call the function for every index? Then I can code such simple or complex search as I need. Examples: <dtml-in "Catalog(indicies=['id', 'titile', 'time'], callback=mySearch)"> def mySearch(id, titile, time): if re.search("ZOPE", id): return 1 if re.search("python", title, re.I): return 1 if "2000/01/01" <= time <= "2000/12/31": return 1 return 0 Let the function return 1 for objects that correspond the serach criteria, 0 for failed objects, and raise StopSearch exception if it need to stop search immediatly. Oleg. ---- Oleg Broytmann http://www.zope.org/Members/phd/ phd@phd.pp.ru Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.