I love taking a crack at these.. :) At 6:45 PM +0200 5/23/02, Thierry Florac wrote:

- is there a "prefered" or "best working" operating system to run Zope servers ?? I may have to choose between a Debian GNU/Linux server (SMP on Intel) and a Solaris server (on Sparc). I've read here and there several messages talking about problems with Zope on Solaris, are they always true ??

No preferred or best working. Whatever is easiest for you to keep up and running. For me, that has always been Linux.

- as we also have a few applications to share, which can't be handled by Zope before several weeks, is there a best way to combine Zope and Apache ?? mod_proxy, mod_rewrite, pcgi, fastcgi, virtual hosts ??? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each of them ??

Again, no best way, just the way that helps you do what you want to do. For years I did not use Apache at all, but recently switched to mod_proxy (damn easy) for better logging (virtual hosts) and the use of mod_gzip. Virtual hosts is really for multiple sites out of one installation.

- as our needs are rather simple, and may just include customization and improvements to standard products, are there any benefits or drawbacks to write our new products as ZClasses, instead of full Python written products ?? Are the performances of each other equivalent ??

Quick and easy, probably ZClasses. Longer and complex go for Python.

- as we may quickly have a large amount of documents stored in our Zope database, is it a better practice to store everything into the ZODB, or to make Zope handle only metadatas and store real documents into external objects (by using products like ExternalFile, for example) ?? I'm a little afraid when thinking of all my files stored in a single Zope database, and I think that storing documents externally may speed up several processes like incremental backups...

This is a very very common question. Sorry to repeat myself, but depends on what you are storing and what you are doing with those objects. If you want to store millions of JPGS and just want to have Zope serve them up, keep them on the filesystem. If you are storing documents that need lots of workflow, security, and will benefit from other ZODB things, keep it there. I have been storing everything for about 5 sites in one big ZODB. No problems so far and you only have to back it up (one file, rsync works well for this). BZ

On Thu, May 23, 2002 at 06:45:49PM +0200, Thierry Florac wrote:

- is there a "prefered" or "best working" operating system to run Zope servers ?? I may have to choose between a Debian GNU/Linux server (SMP on Intel) and a Solaris server (on Sparc). I've read here and there several messages talking about problems with Zope on Solaris, are they always true ??

All mine run on Debian (i386). I'm far more comfortable there than in Solaris, and all my Solaris installations are scientific workstations anyway. So no Solaris servers here. One thing to keep in mind is that if you: - want to run Debian's stable release, and - want to run the latest Zope, and - don't want to compile either Zope or Python yourself you might run into trouble. Debian's release schedule is very conservative (some might even say slow). The main hitch is when Zope starts requiring a newer version of Python than Debian has in its stable release (as happened between Zope 2.3 and 2.4). Workarounds include: - tracking something other than the stable release of Debian, or - building more recent Zope/Python sources into Debian packages, or - building more recent Zope/Python sources into /usr/local And this says nothing about relative hardware reliability between Sparc and Intel platforms, which may or may not be a factor in your decision.

- as we also have a few applications to share, which can't be handled by Zope before several weeks, is there a best way to combine Zope and Apache ?? mod_proxy, mod_rewrite, pcgi, fastcgi, virtual hosts ??? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each of them ??

I use proxy and rewrite (insert plug for http://www.zope.org/Members/mwr/VHosts_With_Zope_Default), and each major production site gets its own INSTANCE_HOME for custom products. A Zope VirtualHostMonster can make Zope content in a subfolder look like content in the root folder of that site.

- as our needs are rather simple, and may just include customization and improvements to standard products, are there any benefits or drawbacks to write our new products as ZClasses, instead of full Python written products ?? Are the performances of each other equivalent ??

Python. Use http://www.zope.org/Members/maxm/HowTo/easyProduct to get a quick start; as quickly as one can develop a Python product with Max's structure in place, I'd be surprised if a ZClass was much faster. I think he's working on an updated version including Catalog awareness and perhaps some cosmetic changes to the management interface to make it look more like core Zope products. I have no idea about performance differences, if any.

- as we may quickly have a large amount of documents stored in our Zope database, is it a better practice to store everything into the ZODB, or to make Zope handle only metadatas and store real documents into external objects (by using products like ExternalFile, for example) ??

Do you need to take advantage of Zope's "Undo" capabilities? If so, I think you'll end up using the ZODB. If not, use one of the external file products.

P.S. : please be kind to answer to this mail directly, because I had to unsubscribe from this mailing list for professionnal reasons... :-((

But since you can send email to the list, I'm sure we'd all love to hear what profesional reasons prevent you from subscribing. -- Mike Renfro / R&D Engineer, Center for Manufacturing Research, 931 372-3601 / Tennessee Technological University -- renfro@tntech.edu