[Zope-dev] Experiments with ORMapping

[Joachim Werner]

> Now, it may be useful to provide a management interface for defining the
> schema mapping.  I haven't approached that yet; AFAICT this is where the
> work done on SmartObjects and DBObjects would be very useful.  Initially
> I was planning for people to code the mapping purely in Python so we
> could gain experience and find common patterns before inventing a UI.

Our initial plans for SmartObjects (if I get Stephan right) are to define
all objects in Python code (as DBObjects do now), but to also provide two
alternative ways of creating the necessary code:

a) by importing and "compiling" an XML object description (which might come
from a UML tool)
b) via a ZMI interface similar to the ZClass GUI (which may or may not use
the XML schemas, depending on the actual implementation)

Of course it would be necessary to dynamically refresh the newly generated
filesystem-based code. The other issue that applies in general to all
filesystem-based code is that it is not directly available over ZEO as it is
not in the ZODB. But that should not be a very large problem ...