[Zope] contrasting Zope vs. Vignette

[Michael Hirsch]

First, I'd like to that Chris and Anthony who gave me some pointers
for things to look out for at the meeting with Vignette.  I hope that
it is not inappropriate to post my reactions to this list.  I think
many of us are interested in comparisons of Zope to other products.

What is clear to me is that Vignette has much better marketing.  As a
developer, I really liked the fairly technical discussion I had a
Digital creations.  We talked a lot about _how_ Zope does what it
does, but not much about _what_ it can do.  Vignette had a pretty good
canned presentation of the many things is can do, but very little
discussion of how it works.  Part of the problem may be that Zope can
do everything, so where do you start when you present it :), but
mostly it is that Vignette has a marketing mindset and Digital
Creations has an engineering mindset.  (Which I like, I should add.)

Below I've put an edited version of what I sent my manager after the
meeting.  I would welcome any discussion of my comments.  In
particular, what did I miss or misunderstand?  I'm a novice at Zope,
so I'm sure that there is a lot I don't know, such as what prepackaged
zope tools are there for dealing with workflow, cookies, browser
detection and user tracking?  How hard are they to implement from
scratch?  We'll be making a decision real soon and I need every bit of
info I can get.

--Michael

It appears to me that Zope and StoryServer have essentially the same
capabilities.  StoryServer appears to be Tcl based (at least the
scripting language is Tcl based) whereas Zope is Python.  The object
oriented nature of Python may make it more powerful, but also, perhap,
more confusing at the beginning.  The StoryServer scripting seemed
rather fragile to me--little happens automatically (see below for a
discussion of flushing the cache) or by default.  The Zope concept of
"acquisition" operates very powerfully.  If I had to redo a site I'd
rather use Zope.

StoryServer has a very clever caching mechanism.  They cache
components in the native filesystem, then let Apache's server-side
include mechanism compose the files.  (It wasn't clear to me how they
manage to track users paths if the user only goes to cached files, so
it is possible that they always have some communication overhead--I'm
not sure.)  The Zope cache is inside the Zserver, so probably a little
slower.  OTOH, when a Zope object changes it automatically notifies
the cache, whereas the StoryServer cache needs to be explicitly
flushed.

When the cache is not in use StoryServer appears quite slow.  Even
with the cache they only claimed 1M hits/day using a dual CPU Ultra 2
sparc, which sounds much less than Zope.

StoryServer appears to have much more "out-of-the-box" capabilities,
though it is not clear to me whether that is only appearance, or
reality.  For instance, StoryServer has canned tools for workflow,
cookie management, detection of browser versions, and user tracking.
(Of course, cookies and browser detection are not very difficult.)
I'm sure that Zope can handle such tasks, but I don't know if such
tools are already written or need to be done from scratch.  For
instance, I've heard Jim or Paul say that they know how to deal with
cookies, but I'm not sure what the capabilities are.

Where StoryServer really wins is in the interface.  They have a nice,
Java powered user interface that provides a point and click method of
both writing code, and administering the site.  One big example is
workflow.  StoryServer has a nice system for moving content around,
starting with the initial content entry, then through reviews by
e.g. marketing, legal, etc., until it is finally published.  All of
this is configurable and doable though a nice GUI interface.  I have
confidence that Zope has the capability to perform all these tasks,
but expect that is must be programmed from scratch.  In any case,
there is no fancy GUI for doing this under Zope.

Most of the other differences pointed out by Vignette are FUD, but
just because it is FUD doesn't mean it isn't true.  It would be nice
to know of a high volume, high visibility Zope powered site.

StoryServer is a more mature product.  Many (most) of its advantages
are in the user interface area.  People on the zope list have been
talking about implementing things to close the user interface gap
(dreamweaver, webDAV, java UIs, mozilla).  When/if that happens
StoryServer will have little advantage.  (There is an additional
danger of being stuck in the gui tools.  If you business model doesn't
fit the preprogrammed one in the tools you are out of luck.)

Zope is a new product and still a little rough to use, but the power
of it is clear.  StoryServer has nothing at all like acquisition,
nothing happens automatically, and there are no inherited properties.
Every page has to explicitly define its behavior.  One saving grace
for StoryServer is that it caches "components", i.e. parts of a page
(thing of, say, a navigation bar).  If one component on a page changes
only that component needs to be updated.  Of course, it needs to
explicitly clear the cache when it changes.  Typically, the cache is
cleared via a cron type of job even few minutes.  The ability of a
Zope object to invalidate the cache automatically is very nice. 

--Michael