[Zope] To Zope or Not To Zope?

[Jordan B. Baker]

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Alexander Staubo wrote:

> The risk from my own point of view is really that Zope's design suddenly
> one day might prove inefficient. For example, what if Zope doesn't scale
> beyond 1000 objects? That's my fear, because such a break in scalability
> may be deep in its design. I doubt that Zope doesn't handle 1000
> objects, because obviously you've done some testing beyond that limit
> (you have, haven't you? Right? RIGHT? :), but since I've not looked
> through all the sources I can never be sure that at some point I'll say
> "I'd like to do..." and somebody will tell me "You can't, because
> internally Zopes this and that as...". That's how Windows tends to work.
> :-)

Please, mentioning Zope and Windows in the same sentence is very unfair.
Just try to start poking through Windows' source code next time you find
an issue with it. :)

Seriously though, as Paul points out, you are not solely at the mercy of
Digital Creations if there is a bug or even an internal design issue.  
You can solve it yourself or hire someone to fix it, though I am certain
that DC would be very interested to hear of any bugs in Zope.

Point is, they've given up the source which is giving you, the customer,
ultimate control over the program.

One thing that might help alleviate concerns about scalability is having a
page on the site that details some hard numbers about real-world Zope
installations (ie. # of objects stored, numbers of access per day handled,
size in megabytes of the database, etc).

Just my 2 cents.

-------
Jordan B. Baker -- jbb@spyderlab.com
weaving the web @ http://www.spyderlab.com