[Zope] Should I go with Zope?

[Curtis Maloney]

Green things,

On Wed, 01 Mar 2000, you wrote:
> To the folks on the Zope@zope.org mailing list...
> 
> I've been trying out Zope on CodeIt's free 2 week
> trial and my trial is about over.  I have no
> experience with Zope prior to this trial account.  I
> went through the Zope Content Manager's tutorials and
> have tried to research it thoroughly.
> 
Don't know anything about 'CodeIt', but since ZOPE is free, why not just
install it locally and keep tinkering?


> We are starting a new web application
> project and are looking for a stable, scalable
> platform that will be around and popular/supported for
> a long time. However, my business partner has brought
> up some really good questions about our becoming
> Zope-centric. These are questions that I don't have
> answers for and was hoping that some of you might be
> able to
> answer. 
> 
Ah... a sensible man... ask question FIRST. (o8

> 1. It appears that Zope offers little or no support
> for more tried and true technologies such as Perl and
> basic CGI. Is this the case? How does one interface
> with our existing Perl and C++ CGI's?
> 
ZOPE is pretty much intended to replace Perl and CGI, or act as a CGI program to
a web server.

If you want to keep your existing CGIs, use a front end server (like Apache
[see numerous HOWTOs for details] :), and they can live together reasonably
harmoniously.

> 2. With no basic HTML back up, what if Zope goes
> down?
> 
If you mean "how can we back up our ZOPE site?", then either mirroring via the
FTP access to the DB, or periodic exports of your site should suffice.

If you mean "how can our site continue running if ZOPE dies?", if you utilise
a sepereate server as a front end, all your static content would do well to be
hosted there anyway, for performance.

> 3. What is the limit of traffic Zope can serve at
> once? Can users access the applications reliably,
> repeatedly?
> 
From reading this list, it seems there are some people using ZOPE in very high
traffic areas.  And, of course, if you have your static content being served by
a regular server, that alleviates even more load from it.

> As our 2 week free trial is coming to an end, we need
> to make a decision about whether to stick with Zope or
> go with a more universally accepted technology. If
> you would, please let me know what you think about
> these issues.
> 
Remember, there are really two major parts to ZOPE:  The object
database/renderer, and the ZServer.  It is possible to run ZOPE without the
ZServer, directly from Apache or similar, as a CGI program.

I believe all I have said is accurate, but I do not profess to be a ZOPE
expert.  If anyone cares to correct me, feel free. (like you wouldn't anyway! :)

> Thanks!!
> __________________________________________________


-- 
Have a better one,
	Curtis.

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