[Zope] ZOPE VS. PHP, VIGNETTE ETC.

[Michel Pelletier]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben White [mailto:ben@platform.net]
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 1:27 AM
> To: zope@zope.org
> Subject: [Zope] ZOPE VS. PHP, VIGNETTE ETC.
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am new to Zope -- really excited about it -- but have a few basic 
> questions (which I'm sure have been asked before).
> 
> 1. HOW WELL DOES ZOPE SCALE?
> Is anybody out there using this for high traffic sites? We have been 
> using a custom blend of PHP and Mysql for a busy site and it works 
> pretty well (although MySQL seems to choke when we get really 
> slammed). How well does Zope scale?

Zope scales to multiple arrays of servers with ZEO, which is a
commercial addon.  Without ZEO, you can get really good performance on
one box, but you will hit a celing if your hardware can't handle it
(This would happen with any platform).  ZEO lets you connect multiple
Zopes to the same object storage, so multiple processes on multiple
machines can all access the same content.

> 2. HOW FAST IS ZOPE? VS PHP?
> And how does it compare to the PHP/MySQL combo? Are their any 
> benchmarks available?  It seems pretty quick but I'm not sure what 
> type of transactions are going on below the surface of the pages I'm 
> looking at.

This is kindof an apples and oranges thing.  PHP is probably faster for
simple logic, but PHP does not provide nearly as much infrastructure
(acquisition, full blown security system, XML object, Catalog, full text
indexing, implicit transactional support, ORB style object publishing,
FTP, XML-RPC, WebDAV etc...) as Zope does.  PHP is just a language, not
an application platform.

> 3. HOW WELL DOES ZOPE WORK WITH MYSQL?
> We have built some pretty serious backend with PHP and MySQL and I'd 
> love to be able to keep our database structure etc.

Just fine.  Note that MySQL does not support transactions.  You must be
very careful about that.
 
> 4. HAS ANYBODY COMPARED ZOPE WITH VIGNETTE?
> Some of our big clients have considered using Vignette. Seems Zope 
> has largely the same mission -- albeit with a lot of catch up to do. 
> Has anybody made a similiar comparison -- and if so do you have any 
> info or ideas to share?

I don't think anyone has made a hard comparison, but we have stolen a
few customers from Vignette.  it sort of comes down to, who do you
trust, us or them?  Do you trust someone who gives you all the source
code *and* has a community that helps you for free, or do you trust
someone who will charge you thousands for a proprietary, close source
system and you pay by the hour for support.  As someone coming from PHP
and MySQL, you should clearly understand the benefits Zope provides
overy anything commercial.

> 4. MIGRATING
> What is the best way to migrate from a traditional web structure to 
> Zope? For instance do you have to rebuild and register all of your 
> objects with Zope through the web interface? Or can you upload files 
> and have them be recognized by Zope?

You can upload content into Zope with HTTP, FTP, XML-RPC, and WebDAV.
Content can also be loaded directly off the filesystem with an import
script.

-Michel