Phillipp, First, design your system. Then write the very basics of what you need in Python first using whatever third-party binaries you need to, leaving the methods which use Zopish features (like ZSQL methods, ODB, etc) as stubs. Then after you're done, and it works, you can wrap it in a Zope Product. There's not much information on how to do this, I'm working on material for a Product Developer's Guide now. Authentication should probably be handled outside Zope in your Python code. Unless it's not. :-) -----Original Message----- From: Philipp Auersperg [mailto:zope@philosoft.at] Sent: Friday, August 11, 2000 5:31 PM To: zope@zope.org Subject: [Zope] Using Zope as App Server for non http-Protocols We want to (mis)use zope as an application server servicing a proprietary non-http protocol for transmitting compressed data. Our idea is a specially written client that connects on a proprietary port to zope where a special product is listening and serving the request. Our question: How can I implement a product listening on a specific port and servicing requests and sending back binary (in our case compressed) data. But the product should of course be able to use the infrastructure of Zope (ODB,External methods,ZSQL methods...) Another question is how does the authentification work for such a non-http connection. Any hints? Thanks in advance Philipp Auersperg