-----Original Message----- From: chas [mailto:panda@skinnyhippo.com] Sent: Friday, March 26, 1999 5:56 AM To: zope@zope.org Subject: [Zope] Limitations of just using External Methods ?

Hi zoppelgangers,

Ha! I like this, are you by change a Peak Freak?

I have several applications built 100% with python CGI scripts that I'd like to run on Zope. The reason for this are : a) For the better performance (I was worried about the scalability of CGI for high-availability and knew I had to move to FastCGI or the equivalent) b) I really really like the way Zope takes care of the CGI variable handling (ie. declaring the HTML form fields as arguments in the python method).

However, I don't really want to use DTML at all. The reasons is that I find it much harder to read than pure Python. This is just a personal aesthetic thing and no criticism of Zope at all (full kudos to Digicool on an excellent application). It's just coding aesthetic : I like it all kept in Python, like servlets in java (as opposed to CFML, ASP etc).

So, I've put all of my CGI scripts in a newly-created extensions directory and registered them via the Zope web-manager. It was, as the documentation says, incredibly simple and it seems to work for simple methods. (I'll declare my own packages later).

Now, if I just use External Methods like this (using my own ex-CGI Python scripts to query databases, IMAP etc), am I missing out on any of Zope's main benefits ? In particular, the cache management ? Would I have to turn my stuff into a Zope Product to get these benefits ? (I've not had too much joy with the Product stuff yet)

These 'benefits' you feel you might be missing out on you might not need. One of Zope's best features is the fact that you can just use the components you want. In fact, it sounds like you may just need ZPublisher by itself. If you go to our site and look at the Components section you'll see where you can download it. ZPublisher is just the ORB part of Zope, it traverses your python module and calls your methods based on the URL. Now, you can still USE Zope with these application you write. Even if you write a pure ZPublisher application, you can then plug that application right into Zope with the External Objects product available in the contributed area. -Michel

chas

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