[Zope] comparing Zope with Vignette, IPS and others

[J0N47H4N 5Y]

FutureTense IPS is basically a web development tool that sits on top of
Netscape Application Server, using the Applogic API.  It is closely tied to
NAS so you can't run one without the other (although for some reason the
license for NAS with IPS is cheaper than NAS itself. Go Figure!) Like
Vignette, IPS also requires a database, since it creates a handful of system
tables that it needs to operate.

IPS uses an XML-based programming language that closely resembles
ColdFusion, if you've ever seen that, which makes it fairly easy to program.
It has a <CFOUTPUT> equivalent called <REPLACE> where you specify what
variables you want to replace with values(only needed for plain HTML tags).
However, IPS is MUCH less feature-rich, or robust than ColdFusion, and it
lacks the community and custom CF tags that Allaire has with Coldfusion.
FutureTense also has a web-based administration tool called Xcelerate that
is similar to the Zope management pages and sits atop and is written in the
IPS Content server XML language.  It has a lot of features that Zope has and
others,  including Editorial Workflow and Approval system, form-based
content entry, Asset database (like an ODB), and various others.  Its a
little "prettier" than Zope, but not much different.  The worst part of
FutureTense is that there are like 3-4 different tools that you need to edit
in order to add objects and templates.  There is the IPS Content Server
Admin, there is the Catalog Tool, which is basically a GUI tool that adds
records to tables.  There is also the Xcelerate admin tool and Xcelerate
itself that must be contended with.  Finally, there is this esoteric
Properties editor that must be modified when new Assets are added, I have no
clue what it is for, but you need it to create Assets.

You've probably seen all the Vignette comparisons, but the biggest
difference between Zope and Vignette is the language (Tcl versus
DTML/Python) and the complete lack of a web-based administration tool (it
comes with a set of Client/Server GUI development and administration tools).
Some things that StoryServer has that are cool are the Observation and
Personalization Servers which keeps track of user behavior and can be used
to deliver personalized content (very cool!), a Syndication Server for
broadcasting info around the web and a decent page caching system.  Other
than that, I am very put off by the Tcl language, so I never really pursued
it.


Hope this helps!!

--
SyN

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Message: 9
Date:   Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:55:56 +0200
From: Martin van Nijnatten <euroibc@solair1.inter.NL.net>
To: zope@zope.org
Subject: [Zope] comparing Zope with Vignette, IPS and others

Has anyone information about Zope versus other application
servers/content managers.

With much interest I've read the postings about the Zope/Vignette
comparisons

In particular I'm interesting in Zope versus IPS (see: futuretense.com)

Martin