[ paulporter@buffalotalks.com]

I'm coming to Zope from PHP where my database is MySQL. However I am wanting to move to Zope and am trying to learn the correct way of working in this platform. I know that I can connect to MySQL from Zope but from what I read it appears that the use of this feature is recommended only if one is wanting to use an existing database. Since I am starting a new Zope application, and will be creating new data files, is it better to use MySQL or ZODB to handle form data?

I would really appreciate hearing from experienced Zope users on this matter.

I like to think of Zope as containing the information for the site itself. Other data, like form data, I consider to be in a separate category - Zope helps me to obtain it, but then it is just some (generally non-zope) data that is not specifically related to the site. Such data I normally to put into a relational database. Obviously there is no one right answer, and if you are going to get just a small amount of data, and you already know how you are going to work with it, ZODB is fine. If you are mainly going to display it, and Zope's normal machinery will sort, filter, and combine it the way you want, stick with the ZODB. But if you will get a lot of data, and especially if you need the most flexibility in working with it later, by all means use a relational database. I had one project where I stored form responses in a relational database, used DTML sql queries to produce reports that I published with Zope. Later when we were asked to do more analysis, I used Tidy to turn the Zope reports into XML, then used xslt and svg to analyze the data and produce charts - strange, but it turned out to be the best approach in this case (I had to merge in some more data that was not in electronic form, and did not fit the existing table structures) To sum up, I recommend using a relational database for most jobs like this, but be flexible! Cheers, Tom P