[Zope-dev] Does creating REAL over-the-web Python code becomerealistic with Zope 2.4?

[Joachim Werner]

Hi!


> We see FTP and especially WebDAV as the "best fit" technoligies for the
> "content owners";  we spent a good deal of effoert on cleaning up
FTP/WebDAV
> for yesterday's CMF release, for instance.

I think you are misunderstanding what I mean with enabling "power users":
With WebDAV and FTP one can upload/download/edit HTML content. Maybe also
other documents like Word/PowerPoint. Period. What I am talking about is
data objects. In a data-driven intranet application, the document part is
only one side of the coin. The other is structured data. To get an idea of
what kind of applications I have in mind, think of user-programmable
database tools like MS Access, or some of the web form capabilities of Lotus
Notes, Apple WebObjects (never seen it, but seems to be useful) or
Microsoft's Exchange Server platform.

Examples:

Adapting a Zope-based intranet to an organization:
A power user (call him admin if you like) takes the most suitable template
(which is a set of ZClasses or real Python classes, or maybe just an
XML-based model file) and adds some fields specific to his organization,
changes the look-and-feel, finished. Let's say there is a "sports club"
template that was optimized for football clubs, and he adds support for a
soccer club's specific needs (as far as it does not involve REAL
programming). Compare it to taking and adapting Squishdot. I'd bet that at
least half of the sites using Squishdot were built by people who do not know
about Python at all and did everything over the web. There is a large need
for these things.

Another tool that is useful for this kind of things, but still limited in
some respects, is beehive's MetaPublisher ...

Other example: Somebody wants to publish a web form to enable people to
register for the company's beach party. He just can build the form and the
necessary data storage classes in the back over the web.

These two scenarios show there is no way of doing this via WebDAV/FTP
(except if you provide powerful thick clients, but that seems not too
reasonable to me).

Joachim.