[Zope-dev] Transparent folders?

[Shane Hathaway]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> Shane Hathaway wrote:
> > I am also interested in the Transparent Folders idea and decided to
> > create a prototype.  It's almost ready.  It's just something to
> > experiment with, because right now it slows down Zope by a factor of 50%
> > or so!
> 
> Wow! Wild, I think I'll mention some of my ideas here more often. :)
> 
> What does it do that slows down Zope so much?

It puts a Python wrapper around the basic machinery that gets an
attribute from a folder--not just folders that contain transparent
folders, but *all* folders. There are a few ways to fix that, and we may
want to discuss them.  But for now, try out the product and see if it
does what it's supposed to do.

I got interested in the idea because the concept of symbolic links in a
Zope tree has a lot of merit but could hamper speed and security. 
Transparent folders combined with acquisition, on the other hand, have
similar benefits, are easier to implement, and have the potential to be
quite fast (faster than standard acquisition--though a rewrite will be
necessary to achieve good speed.)

BTW I didn't bother to prevent the case of inheritance from multiple
level transparent folders.  I want to find out whether that's an issue
or not through trial and error.

Shane