[Zope] - Q on product development

[Kent Polk]

Hi Janko (Janko Hauser), in <m0zpbEx-000KmqC@lisboa.ifm.uni-kiel.de> on Dec 14 you wrote:

> As this product should be used by many different users, I don't want
> to fill up the database with all this pictures. So I want to make an
> object, which acts like a file, but stores only a link to an external
> file. 
[...] 
> Q2: I can delete the object from the POS, but how do I delete also the 
> external file? Is there some hook I can use?

It is quite easy to do this. The PDMS (document mgmt) stores some
info in the Object Database, some in an SQL, and the actual documents
in the filesystem (usually). You simply need to identify a unique
id and a mechanism to reference the file given the id. The PDMS
used the folder ids to link a document to a folder and then queried
the SQL for entries associated with a folder. The filesystem filename
was associated with the SQL index for each document (as an example).

Your object could do just as you say - store the filename. Associated
methods could insert, update and retrieve it. Many ways to do this...
 
> Q4: Would it be easier to build soemthing like this as external
> methods? I see now, that it is easier, but than I need to implement my 

For simple things like this, external methods are probably just fine.
Doesn't mean that people aren't working on more general solutions to
your situation though. :^)
 
> own upload scheme and so on. (This are some of the benefits of a
> product, all the predefined protocolls, right?)

You have the form variables including the file info, just save the
uploaded file in the filesystem.
 
> Q6: If more and more packages are developed the security screen
> becomes rather big. How will this be handled in the future?

Good question...

Kent