[ZODB-Dev] Newbie ZODB Questions

[Jennifer Flake]

Hi There,

I have never touched Zope (so I apologize for my newbie questions), but
my company is planning on using it in our next development project.  I
would like to get information on the data storage and its maintenance
requirements.  I hope that someone on the list can help me get answers
to some questions about the care and feeding of ZODB.  I've been an
Oracle DBA for the last few years, so most of my questions are concerns
about storage, failure modes, loss of data, scalability, etc.  

(1) In order to do a backup of the entire database, aside from Data.fs,
what do I have to backup?
(2) Can I move my backup from one platform to another (take a backup
from a Linux server and move it to a Solaris server) and recover my
data?
(3) I did a some reading and saw that the Data.fs is a file where
transactions are appended.  Where does the rest of the object data exist
and is that data in a platform independent format?  If not, is there a
way to get the data out in platform-independent way?
(4) Is there any way to perform adhoc queries on ZODB?
(5) Is ZODB scalable? Would it be possible to store 10 gb of data
without suffering performance issues?
(6) Is RAID the only way to implement redundancy for ZODB?
(7) Is there a way to replicate data from one ZODB to another?
(8) Where do the application usernames/passwords physically exist in
Zope? 
(9) How often does Data.fs file corruption occur?
(10) How does the rollback of a transaction work? (do I have to rollback
all of the transactions that occur after the transaction that I want to
rollback, too)?
(11) If I am "reading" an object, do I continue to get a read-consistent
view of it, even if someone else performs a write to it, while I am
reading it?
(12) If my server slams down from a power outage, will Zope be able to
recover itself gracefully when I restart it?

I'd appreciate any other information/experience that anyone on the list
can offer.  Again, I'm sorry for the barrage of newbie questions.

Thank you,
Jennifer