[Zope-dev] Trying to catch up - what are the best Zope tools today?

[Spicklemire, Jerry]

Itai asked:

> "I started reading about ZPatterns but I still can't get my head 
> around it... I'm wondering if I should try to learn it fast enough 
> for this project, or stick to what I already know. What in people's 
> experience is the typical learning curve for ZPatterns? How much am I 
> going to have to figure out to be able to build support for SQL 
> storage?

FYI ZPatterns has been a rapidly moving target, but it's looking pretty 
solid now, and a few folks have managed to wade in and make sense of it 
already. There's even some documentation at :

	http://www.zope.org/Members/pje/Wikis/ZPatterns/HomePage

Most of the discussions you'll see on this list between Steve Spicklemire 
and Phil Eby / Ty Sarna are directly related to the next rev. of EMarket, 
which will be based on ZPatterns. If you think the flexibility that comes 
from a cleanly implemented Object Pattern will be worth the learning curve, 
ZPatterns is just about there now.

The "how" of storing data in an RDBMS, accessed with ZSQLMethods is no 
different with ZPatterns. The real difference is "who" does the storage 
and retrieval. This is the concept of the "Specialist" object, which 
"knows" all about the specifics of the data and storage implementation.

In any case, get to know ZClasses and PythonMethods, which may not have 
been ready for prime time, or even released, last time you looked. Those 
will be useful no matter which direction you choose.

Later,
Jerry S.