[Zope-PTK] Membership packaging

[Andrew Kenneth Milton]

+----[ Phillip J. Eby ]---------------------------------------------
| At 12:23 PM 6/5/00 +1000, Andrew Kenneth Milton wrote:
| >
| >I think we need a broader concept of what a User is, and we need a
| >conceptual User Management Product.
| 
| Actually, that's what LoginManager is intended to be.  In ZPattern
| framework terms, it is intended to be a "Specialist" for participants in an
| application/site.  (A Specialist is a gathering point for placing
| application-level methods which deal with objects that fill a specific role
| in an application.)

The current release of LoginManager (in PTK) doesn't particularly do this, 
and as this is my only point of reference I comment on what I know :-)

I'm not particularly concerned with implementation details, and I don't
think too many of the 'users' would be either. They just want to know
what they have to do to get it to work their way.

| >o Membership Manager
| >     which handles roles and stuff like mailing out passwords
| >     if you've stored them in plain text, or providing the 'hint' questions
| >     if you've stored them encrypted.
| 
| The idea here is that you add methods for this on LoginManager's "Methods"
| tab.  They can be DTML methods/documents representing pages that people go
| to, or other kinds of methods that are called from elsewhere in the
| application.  And of course the portal manager/developer is free to define
| and place additional methods here that are specific to their portal's needs.

I would prefer to see (Python) product plugins available rather than simply 
adding 'pages.' I'm not putting down what we have, I would just like to see
something different. I have a different set of requirements, in that I
normally have to provide turn-key solutions to 3rd parties. DTML Methods
as development simply don't cut it, and certainly don't make for easy
to bundle solutions.

Try developing two different Portals using PTK and one Zope Instance.
Zclasses make this an exquisite pain in the arse, you can't copy and
paste the sub-classes between Products. And you can't import the
PTKDemo stuff more than once. You can't edit the PTKDemo stuff because
its pickled.

My focus is more on development using these things for other people, not 
setting something up out of the box. I'm sure there are other solution
providers out there who would like to be able to have something extendable,
not just configurable.

| >o Property Manager
| >     This obviously handles the attributes of a user in some way. It
| >     deals with the storage and retrieval of those properties. So the
| >     simplest case would be for it to create document in a folder with
| >     for each username and add properties to it. You could then add a 
| >     ZCatalog solution, an SQL solution, an LDAP solution etc..
| 
| The ZPatterns framework from which LoginManager derives already has support
| for "sheet providers" and "attribute providers" which can supply the data
| for properties and propertysheets.  You can create as many kinds of such
| providers as you like, and add them to the appropriate tabs on LoginManager
| or on any specific UserSource.  This is done through the Zope management
| interface.  If one creates an LDAP attribute/sheet provider class or SQL
| sheet provider class and registers it as a ZPatterns plugin, the class will
| automatically appear on the "add list" of the appropriate tabs of all
| LoginManagers and UserSources.

I know you and Ty wrote ZPatterns and LoginManager, but, this was not a 
discussion about what ZPatterns can do. It was a request for requirements 
for User Management.

Whilst ZPatterns are used by the LoginManager now and the PTK uses
LoginManager, that isn't to say that this will always be the case, and I 
just want to get my requests for User Management functionality stated, I 
am not denegrating ZPatterns or the LoginManager.

Whilst you can say "the CVS version does this now" I cannot develop
products using the CVS version, I can only develop using released 
products because clients don't know, and don't want to know about CVS, 
they want to see somewhere where they can obtain that software because
it makes them feel better about the tools that are in use.

-- 
Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet|  P:+61 7 3870 0066   | Andrew Milton
The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd          |  F:+61 7 3870 4477   | 
ACN: 082 081 472                     |  M:+61 416 022 411   | Carpe Daemon
PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068    |akm@theinternet.com.au|