-----Original Message----- From: Darran Edmundson [mailto:dee124@rsphy1.anu.edu.au]

One component of our budding academic site is a searchable database of publications authored by department members. Publications come in various flavours: journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book chapters, etc. All of these share certain properties while others are unique.

Sounds like inheritance.

Question: In terms of ZClasses, is it best to create an abstract Publication ZClass with common data and methods and then subclass the various flavours?

It's a philosophical issue, but I would say that soulds like a good plan.

In addition to publication details, I also want the option of encapsulating the data files, be it in PDF, MSWord, ASCII, TeX format, etc.

You want Zope to *interpret* their content somehow? Or just have nifty labeled File objects?

Question: Rather than create a slew of File-like products in the root Product folder, should I again create an abstract class and subclass for each Mime type a la the PDF example used in: http://www.zope.org/Members/lstaffor/zProperties

Zope's file object allready has mime-typeablity and storage, if you don't want to parse/interpret the contents of a special file I don't see why you can't just use the stock file object.

The same applies for People, variants of which include staff, students, alumni, visitors, etc., with the difference that people can migrate from one class to another (student to alumni).

Do you want these people objects to also participate in authentication/authorization? In this case you should go with standard Zope user objects and Roles. -Michel