[Zope] Q: How are interactive web apps done?

[Robb Shecter]

Hi,

I've done lots of servlet programming, and am finally checking Zope
out.  It looks -very- interesting.  I'd like to use it but I'm still
trying to figure out how I'd use Zope in all the ways I use servlets.

For example:

A typical servlet-based web app uses the servlet API to automatically
generate a session object for each user.  (The API maintains the
session by either a cookie or url rewriting.)  A small inheritance
framework can easily be written to make some servlets do
authentication in their base classes before allowing the user to
continue.  The subclasses then can get the session object, which is a
hash table of objects.  One might then define a User java object that
gets put into the session after authentication in the base class.  Now
all of the user's attributes can be accessed by the servlets.

What is the equivalent way of doing things in Zope?  I've read about
the various user permissions, but I'm not sure how that'd be used in a
web application.  For example, how would an interactive banking
application be implemented in Zope?  Where would you define what info
you want to save about each user?  How is the ODB used in a more
database-like way, as opposed to a transparent web document source
way?  Or, is there no difference?

Thanks for any info.  I think that it'd be great to see someone make a
howto like "Zope for Servlet programmers".

- Robb