What I am referring to is rendering objects in the ZOPE database to a file system view. The object database could be managed as a Network Drive(except that the view would be data in the ZOPE object database). You could through some translation (xml or other) render the object database to CIFS/NFS. 1. Run applications directly from the ZOPE file system. 2. Modify and Render objects through a regular file explorer or file manager potentially an external text editor or file editor(word,excel,other). 3. Objects that had no meaning to the file system view would not be rendered. Attributes to file properties. This is a feature of 8i that oracle is pushing. The rendering of a database to a user that does not realize it is a database. ie. 1. Open a spreadsheet in the Network Drive and see a current version of a file and its data. 2. Intranet is now a shared drive - depending on your privileges - you see different objects. I guess what I am asking is: Can Zope act like a CIFS/NFS file system(virtual file system) with a layer of translation for converting Zope Objects to File system objects directly (XML or other)? If I understand it, this is how the database is rendering objects to HTTP or now(Zserver)FTP. Why can't you render them as a Network file system? Any thought? -----Original Message----- From: Jim Fulton [mailto:jim@digicool.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 1999 2:39 PM To: Theodore Patrick Cc: Zope Mailing List Subject: Re: [Zope] Zope Database in XML Theodore Patrick wrote:

If you can access the database directly through this

interface(xml/pickle),

couldn't you *potentially* map a network drive to the interface(cifs/nfs). This could allow you to render data in and out of the database through the file system interface rather than ftp/http.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. You can export and import data to a file system now, using the Zope database format, which is built on Python's pickle format. The XML conversion feature just gets the data into a slightly more editable form. One key difference between http/ftp and the file system is that Zope trusts the file system much more and is willing to get pickles (binary, XML, whatever) from it. This is a sort of a security feature. In the future, I'd like to make a variation on the Python pickler that was easier to configure to be pickier and safer to use with network supplied pickles. Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@digicool.com Python Powered! Technical Director (888) 344-4332 http://www.python.org Digital Creations http://www.digicool.com http://www.zope.org Under US Code Title 47, Sec.227(b)(1)(C), Sec.227(a)(2)(B) This email address may not be added to any commercial mail list with out my permission. Violation of my privacy with advertising or SPAM will result in a suit for a MINIMUM of $500 damages/incident, $1500 for repeats.