[Zope] Zope vs. ColdFusion for e-commerce development

[Martijn Faassen]

[I know little about ColdFusion, quite a bit about Zope]

> Ben Galbraith wrote:

> I'm with a new e-commerce startup and we're currently evaluating the
> development tools we'll be using to create our website.  The platform
> will either be Sun hardware running Solaris 7/Apache, or Intel/Linux
> boxes.

Does ColdFusion run on Intel/Linux yet?

> We initially evaluated four solutions: mod_perl, PHP (using Apache
> module support), ColdFusion, and Zope.  We've eliminated mod_perl
> because of maintenance nightmares, PHP because, well, we just did, and
> now we're down to ColdFusion and Zope.  Initially I favored Zope, but
> there are a few concerns I have about it.
> 
> First off, the size of the ColdFusion development pool and it's
> development history suggest greater stability and a more mature
> feature set.

Don't underestimate the size of the Zope development pool! To start off,
Digital Creations has some great designers and programmers. You don't
find a lot of those. Then there's the open source issue; there are quite
a few programmers doing things (from fairly simple to extremely
advanced) with Zope and releasing their produce as open source. Our
typical week seems to include the release of several interesting Zope
components ('products').

A difficulty with Zope I want to add here is that the documentation is
still lacking. This is recognized; books are being written, current
documentation is being expanded and the open source Zope Documentation
Project is forging ahead.

As to stability; I haven't heard of many stability problems with Zope.
Due to the design of the object database Zope can recover from things
like 'disk full' gracefully; I've had this happen several times to me so
I know. :)

Feature set is hard to say. I haven't compared with ColdFusion. I know
ColdFusion has a client for development while Zope uses a web interface.
Due to the nature of the web Zope's interface is likely more clunky but
it's definitely powerful. Also it's very nice you can manage your site
from any machine with a web browser and an internet connection.

I do know Zope's feature set is growing rapidly. Zope's development is
proceeding rapidly in general. Zope 2 adds quite a lot of features to
Zope 1, and Zope 1 was released less than a year ago. Now we're at Zope
2.1. And these are real version numbers; in industry standard terms Zope
must be at version 3 or 4 at least. ;)

> Second, it seems that ColdFusion offers all the
> functionality that Zope does and then some.

Acquisition? i.e. a way to decompose functionality for your website..it
has some very powerful uses. Unfortunately it's hard to explain. :)

Ability to extend it in the (in my opinion) friendliest scripting
language in the world, Python? Extend it in *significant* ways; you can
build whole new components. You can do simpler (but still very powerful)
extensions through external methods as well. 

And Python can do a *lot* of things.

Ability to build new components through the web (ZClasses)?

Manage-through-the-web?

Object database?

WebDAV support? FTP support?

>  Third, ColdFusion seems
> to offer similiar performance.

No comments on this, dunno.

>  Fourth, the database connectivity
> seems to be equal to Zope's.

No comments here either.

>  Fifth, their tag-based programming
> language seems to offer equivalent functionality to Zope's.

Hm, what about Python itself though? You can use Python expressions in
DTML. Also acquisition and the entire Zope environment really add to
DTML's capabilities. Then again, I don't know ColdFusion's language. :)

> Sixth, I
> can find more ColdFusion developers than I can shake a stick at, but I
> have to explain to everyone I meet what Zope is.

All I can say is that this will change. :)

> So, as my lack of information leads me to believe, there are only two
> drawbacks to ColdFusion as compared to Zope: (1) I have to pay $3.5k
> for each license, and

> (2) Zope has a superior model for delegating
> ownership to different people for the website.

(3) ColdFusion is closed source

To me this is a very important disadvantage. Zope is open. It talks lots
of standards and protocols, and if it doesn't, it's possible to extend
it. People do extend it. Open source can also get you a very dedicated
community of developers.
 
> Could you correct any misconceptions I have and explain to me why I
> should choose Zope over ColdFusion?  I want to select the tool by Wed.
> or Thurs., so a quick reply would be appreciated.

Someone familiar with ColdFusion should speak up, but I hope I've at
least told you about some powerful features of Zope.

Regards,

Martijn