[Zope-PTK] Member Publishing

[albert boulanger]

Shane writes,


   Thank you for posting this.  I am posting my brief evaluation, perhaps
   you see it differently.

   As I see it, Zope's infrastructure (ZODB and ZPublisher in particular)
   changes the diagram in subtle, important ways.

   - The workflow manager is ZPublisher itself.

   - Workflow relevant data is implicit to the ZODB objects.

   - Work items are persistent.

   - The process definition and organizational mode are contained in and
   managed by the portal_workflow object.

   - Process instances are also persistent.

   - The history is stored in the workflow status.

   In fact, Zope turns the diagram inside out, making the internal objects
   externally visible and much easier to write.  Users (participants) don't
   interact with the application, worklist handler, or tool agent.  They
   interact with the work items and process instances themselves.  So some
   of the concepts on the diagram are unnecessary for Zope.

I would rephrase your outlook to "the use of the PTK portal product in ZOPE"

Well I do have a different view which comes from the context I think
about workflow. I think the ZPublisher should be a lower layer than
workflow. A number of other interested here that I have spoken to have
interest in workflow to cause action by applying applications to data
or input from the user. (In our case it is engineering applications
that we want to sequence in a workflow and publish and store using
ZPublisher and ZODB) Stepping back, workflow is a way on representing
business process. Publishing content for a portal is only one use of a
state engine for workflow. Your are right that if you limit the use of
workflow to change status of portal content you could drop a layer,
but I think you will be building a really nice thing that would have
limited scope which would be a shame.

Also the layering sequence is important since I want to use ZODB to do
content management of my workflows.

I am happy to correspond to clarify anything.

Regards,
Albert Boulanger
vPatch Inc.
aboulanger@vpatch.com