Hi: I'm a new Zope user and I'm evaluating Zope for use in a few projects. One project is an online parts system for a truck manufacturer (about 3000 'hits' per day). This is a project we've been maintaining for a few years in Cold Fusion. While performance of the application is OK, we're concerned with CF's lack of extensibility, and we're also moving towards open source solutions. I have some questions about Zope I'm hoping you can answer: 1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS? 2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server? Most of the info on the web I've found about not using Zope's web server is a few years old. 3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT? 4. If the initial Zope-based projects work out well, we're going to consider using Zope on a much bigger project. At peak times, this project has about 200 concurrent users. It'a a very database intensive application. Will Zope scale well to something of this size? The current version of this application is a load-balanced Cold Fusion setup. Thanks in advance! W. Jeffrey Rankin Lead Web Application Developer O'NEIL & ASSOCIATES, INC. http://www.oneil.com 495 Byers Rd. Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-3662 Phone: (937) 865-0846 ext. 3504 Fax: (937) 865-5858 E-mail: jrankin@oneil.com Confidentiality Notice The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and intended for use only by the person(s) or organization listed in the address. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender at O'Neil & Associates, Inc., immediately. Any copying, dissemination, or distribution of this communication, other than by the intended recipient, is strictly prohibited.
--On Freitag, 10. Oktober 2003 9:54 Uhr -0400 Jeff Rankin <jrankin@oneil.com> wrote:
Hi:
I'm a new Zope user and I'm evaluating Zope for use in a few projects. One project is an online parts system for a truck manufacturer (about 3000 'hits' per day). This is a project we've been maintaining for a few years in Cold Fusion. While performance of the application is OK, we're concerned with CF's lack of extensibility, and we're also moving towards open source solutions. I have some questions about Zope I'm hoping you can answer:
1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS?
There is no need for IIS. Zope can run standalone.
2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server? Most of the info on the web I've found about not using Zope's web server is a few years old.
Zope has its own Webserver. You want to run Zope behind Apache and Squid for caching and virtual hosting issues.
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
DTML sucks. Use ZPT.
4. If the initial Zope-based projects work out well, we're going to consider using Zope on a much bigger project. At peak times, this project has about 200 concurrent users. It'a a very database intensive application. Will Zope scale well to something of this size? The current version of this application is a load-balanced Cold Fusion setup.
Mostly read or write access? Zope scale fine with ZEO. Lots of concurrent write might be a problem but there are ways to handle this. It depends on your setup how to approach the problem. -aj
Zope has its own Webserver. You want to run Zope behind Apache and Squid for caching and virtual hosting issues.
I thought zope could do its own virtual hosting?
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
DTML sucks. Use ZPT.
Why do you say this? I generally work on sites where its just me and no one else. For this purpose I find DTML much easier, quicker, and less verbose to use then ZPT. Of course, if we had a graphics designer that would be a different story. Or perhaps I am missing something about ZPT?
Mostly read or write access? Zope scale fine with ZEO. Lots of concurrent write might be a problem but there are ways to handle this. It depends on your setup how to approach the problem.
If he is using and RDBMS (I thought this was implied, might just be me) then the concurrent writes will not be an issue at all, any halfway decent database should be able to handle 200 or so concurrent transactions. This, of course, depends on your resource usage. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
--On Freitag, 10. Oktober 2003 7:13 Uhr -0700 Eric Merritt <cyberlync@yahoo.com> wrote:
Zope has its own Webserver. You want to run Zope behind Apache and Squid for caching and virtual hosting issues.
I thought zope could do its own virtual hosting?
using VHM
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
DTML sucks. Use ZPT.
Why do you say this? I generally work on sites where its just me and no one else. For this purpose I find DTML much easier, quicker, and less verbose to use then ZPT. Of course, if we had a graphics designer that would be a different story. Or perhaps I am missing something about ZPT?
That's my personal opinion. DTML is inconsistent, and hard to learn for beginners and has several flaws in the design.
Mostly read or write access? Zope scale fine with ZEO. Lots of concurrent write might be a problem but there are ways to handle this. It depends on your setup how to approach the problem.
If he is using and RDBMS (I thought this was implied, might just be me) then the concurrent writes will not be an issue at all, any halfway decent database should be able to handle 200 or so concurrent transactions. This, of course, depends on your resource usage.
I was talking about using the ZODB. -aj
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find
yourselves using DTML or
ZPT?
DTML sucks. Use ZPT.
Why do you say this? I generally work on sites where its just me and no one else. For this purpose I find DTML much easier, quicker, and less verbose to use then ZPT. Of course, if we had a graphics designer that would be a different story. Or perhaps I am missing something about ZPT?
If, and only if, - you have no confusion at all about the DTML syntax or its processing model - you're not working with a GUI HTML designer - you know exactly how the namespace stack works - you are very disciplined in keeping logic and presentation separate you will be fine using DTML. I like to think I meet all those criterion, and I had an investment in DTML already (it was for a time The Templating Language in Zope) but I use ZPT almost exclusively now. (I find ZPT cumbersome for non-XML-ish templating.) I find it cleaner, more logical, and easier to read and write than DTML. ZPT does take a bit more typing in general, but I consider it an investment against much more work in the future. --jcc (explicit is good) -- "My point and period will be throughly wrought, Or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought."
Andreas Jung wrote:
--On Freitag, 10. Oktober 2003 9:54 Uhr -0400 Jeff Rankin <jrankin@oneil.com> wrote:
1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS?
There is no need for IIS. Zope can run standalone.
not entirely true, http://audible.transient.net/zope/#zserver
2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server?
It if you care at all about reliability or security.
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
DTML sucks. Use ZPT.
No arguments there. -- Jamie Heilman http://audible.transient.net/~jamie/
1) I don't use anything near IIS, but I have not heard of any problems with IIS as a front end. 2) Nope. I use Apache because I have a bunch of websites hosted and Apache writes out individual virtual hosts logs. If Zope gets that feature, I will dump Apache. 3) DTML. I read up on ZPT, but for now I can't see a reason to switch. Call me old school. 4) Sounds like you are going to keep a RDMS back end yes? Zope can handle the hits if you put it on the right boxen. BZ -- http://www.zopezone.com http://www.bluewildfire.com
Hi:
I'm a new Zope user and I'm evaluating Zope for use in a few projects. One project is an online parts system for a truck manufacturer (about 3000 'hits' per day). This is a project we've been maintaining for a few years in Cold Fusion. While performance of the application is OK, we're concerned with CF's lack of extensibility, and we're also moving towards open source solutions. I have some questions about Zope I'm hoping you can answer:
1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS?
2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server? Most of the info on the web I've found about not using Zope's web server is a few years old.
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
4. If the initial Zope-based projects work out well, we're going to consider using Zope on a much bigger project. At peak times, this project has about 200 concurrent users. It'a a very database intensive application. Will Zope scale well to something of this size? The current version of this application is a load-balanced Cold Fusion setup.
Thanks in advance!
W. Jeffrey Rankin Lead Web Application Developer
O'NEIL & ASSOCIATES, INC. http://www.oneil.com 495 Byers Rd. Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-3662 Phone: (937) 865-0846 ext. 3504 Fax: (937) 865-5858 E-mail: jrankin@oneil.com
Confidentiality Notice The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and intended for use only by the person(s) or organization listed in the address. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender at O'Neil & Associates, Inc., immediately. Any copying, dissemination, or distribution of this communication, other than by the intended recipient, is strictly prohibited.
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--On Freitag, 10. Oktober 2003 09:54 -0400 Jeff Rankin <jrankin@oneil.com> wrote:
1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS?
No, use Apache ;-)
2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server? Most of the info on the web I've found about not using Zope's web server is a few years old.
If exposed to the Internet, **absolutely**.
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
ZPT. DTML is very, very obsolete for quite some time already. Unfortunately it is still featured in most of the books...
4. If the initial Zope-based projects work out well, we're going to consider using Zope on a much bigger project. At peak times, this project has about 200 concurrent users. It'a a very database intensive application. Will Zope scale well to something of this size? The current version of this application is a load-balanced Cold Fusion setup.
You can load-balance Zope as well, if that's what you mean. hth, Stefan -- The time has come to start talking about whether the emperor is as well dressed as we are supposed to think he is. /Pete McBreen/
On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 06:54, Jeff Rankin wrote:
1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS?
Zope won't complain... but you will inherit IIS's numerous problems.
2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server? Most of the info on the web I've found about not using Zope's web server is a few years old.
Not necessary, but wise. Apache is more aggressively maintained and more widely deployed than Zope's webserver component. It's assumed that this makes Apache + Zope more secure and reliable than Zope alone. Given IIS's chronic issues, I doubt Zope + IIS presents much of an advantage over Zope standalone. Either way, caching is a Good Thing, so there may be significant advantages to running *something* in front of Zope for any app that's going to support more than a few dozen concurrent users.
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
That's a bit of a religious question hereabouts. There are Zopers who will advocate ZPT without needing to hear your requirements first. ZPT is *clearly* a better tool, but better tools don't necessarily create better results. :-) To provide some balance, it may be worth noting that DTML will probably be more intuitive if you're used to ASP. Having said that, neither one should be used the way ASP typically is. Whichever templating language you pick, make a point of using Python scripts for *all* business logic. Life is much better that way. $.02, Dylan
Jeff Rankin wrote:
1. Can you share experiences about using Zope with IIS?
Using IIS is possible, but generally unnecessary. Zope will install as a service on windows servers.
2. Is it still absolutely necessary to use Zope behind another web server? Most of the info on the web I've found about not using Zope's web server is a few years old.
Depends on what you need to do. Generally it's only necessary if you want to run multiple Zope instances on the same box (all on pot 80). Apache name-based virtual hosting (in combination with some rewrite rules and Zope's Virtual Host Monster) will serve you well. If you just need to run one Zope instance, another web-server is unnecessary. Caveat: if you need to serve large static files from the filesystem, than using another web server in front of Zope can be a very good idea.
3. In terms of templating systems, do you find yourselves using DTML or ZPT?
depends on what I'm using it for. If I'm serving dynamic HTML or XML documents, ZPT is the way to go for me. Other formats such as Comma and tab separated values or text email, are easier to produce using DTML.
4. If the initial Zope-based projects work out well, we're going to consider using Zope on a much bigger project. At peak times, this project has about 200 concurrent users. It'a a very database intensive application. Will Zope scale well to something of this size? The current version of this application is a load-balanced Cold Fusion setup.
You're not providing enough information. What we need to know is, are the users mostly reading or writing from the database, and can reads be safely cached. HTH, - Michael Bernstein Author, Zope Bible michaelbernstein.com
participants (9)
-
Andreas Jung -
BZ -
Dylan Reinhardt -
Eric Merritt -
J. Cameron Cooper -
Jamie Heilman -
Jeff Rankin -
Michael Bernstein -
Stefan H. Holek