[Zope-dev] Folderish or SimpleItem object types for structural content

[Martijn Jacobs]

Hello guys!

I have a simple question about the design of hierarchical zope product 
structures in Zope 2. For example, you have categories, within 
categories you have sub-categories, within sub-categories you have 
sub-sub categories, within that you have content items, within content 
items you have....etcetera.

All those products are different 'types', with different functionality 
and different 'roles' as what they represent, so I write different 
products for every type. For every object that can contain subobjects 
you could derive it from 'Folder' (or Object Manager). But when you 
derive all these product types from 'Folder' you end up with ALOT of 
objects in your database.

In a lot of real world cases you have categories and items, that makes 
things easy, but what about the structure explained above?

My question for you guys is : When do you decide to make it a Folderish 
object which contains sub-objects, or to make it a Simple Item object 
with, for example, some structured XML content, or dictionary / list 
properties containing the 'sub-structure'? The last option is more work, 
because you have to write your add/edit/delete/etc code yourself, 
writing it with Folders makes it more easily, but then you have an 
explosion of objects in the ZODB.

I would like to have some fresh thoughts about this, so maybe you can help.


Thank you in advance,

kind regards,

Martijn.

-- 
Martijn Jacobs
Four Digits, internet solutions
e-mail: martijn at fourdigits.nl | web: http://www.fourdigits.nl
tel: +31 (0)26 44 22 700 | fax: +31 (0)84 22 06 117