[Zope] General information

[Tom Deprez]

Hi all,

Thanks all for the great feedback you sended to me for my previous questions!

Now, I've some other questions to ask, hope I don't offend somebody with
these. Since I'm new in all these stuff, I'll ask you the experienced
gourus for reliable information about these. I must write a sort of
presentation for convincing people that Zope can help us in a great way. So
I need some pro & cons of Zope and other sort alike applications. Is
somebody willing to help me a little bit with this? I hope so. Thanks
already for reading this part. Ok, I'll ask some questions which I think I
need for situating and explaning Zope (to people who know about this stuff
and to people who don't know anything about it, so it's for a broad audience)

Yesterday, I've seen a demo of Lotus Notes, quiet impressive too. Most
people have seen this demo too. So I should make a comparison between these
two and also a little bit with other same alike applications.

I know Zope is Open Source and free. Offcourse this is a great benefit, but
I need also some info on usage by experts on the web, usage by people who
just want to put an article on the web (no experience however).

1. Other available applications? 
    I know of ColdFusion, Lotus Notes (it's web & database part), ...

2. Why using Zope above the other?
    Pro's & Con's of these applications and Zope.

3. Looking at Lotus Notes, they don't need an external database. Can Zope's
database be also used like the one in Lotus Notes? (ie. Storing records,
etc..) How can this be done. Is this database capable of storing large data
amounts? Huge pictures? 

4. If you need to make a knowledge base from start. Should we better use a
database like Oracle, SyBase, PostgreSQL, ... or use the Zope database? 

5. The search in Lotus Notes is fast... How fast can Zope search?

Other information is surely welcome, because I want to give a good
presentation on this subject.

Kind Regards, 

Tom.