[Zope-dev] Product Data Storage

[Dan L. Pierson]

Andy Dawkins writes:
 > I have decided AGAINST searching the ZODB for instances of ZMailIn because
 > that is just too scary, hideously inefficient and I don't want to go there.
 > Instead I thought of keeping an up-to-date list of where all the current
 > instances where held.  My original idea was to get the ZMailIn product to
 > write a file in to the /lib/python/Products/ZMailIn directory, which
 > shouldn't cause any problems that I can see.

... snip ...

 > So my question is this:
 > What are peoples opinions on storing shared product data?  Where should it
 > be placed?  Should this ability be added to Zope as a standard?

Shared data should go in zope/var, or a subdirectory of that.
Zope/lib should be considered read-only by running products unless
explicitly changed by the user.  As you have correctly pointed out,
lots of machines share Zope installations for multiple servers.

A standard interface for Python code to get a private subdirectory of
var might well be useful.