[Zope] ZODB or xySQL?

[Pavlos Christoforou]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Ragnar Beer wrote:

> Hello Zopistas out there!
> 
> 
> It also came to my mind that I might be missing an important feature 
> of Zope: ZODB. For some reason (lack of marketing?) I just didn't 
> realize that there is a database behind Zope that I could use to 
> store my stuff. Last night I read some documentation but I have some 
> questions left open:
> 
> Can I access ZODB via TCP/IP socket to retrieve data for statistical 
> calculations?

If you are not planning of storing thousands of forms and have them
accessed by many users/per second then ZODB is really a good solution and
it is *easy* too use. For example (in the simplest case) you can design a
ZClass that contains all the required fields and a form for the clients to
fill. A method can instantiate the ZClass in a folder and add the
parameters provided by the customer and thats about it in terms of simple
storage. You can have a method that returns the data in some convenient
format as a text file which you can then input into your favorite stat
package. Or you can get fancier and build an xmlrpc method in your stat
package if it supports xmlrpc (ie if your stat package is a set of perl
programs) and get the data directly into your package, or get even fancier
and incorporate your statistical analysis routines inside your Zope
product, but I am getting carried away here :-) (and yes it is doable, it
has been done and if you decide to take this route I have some PCA
routines in python you might want)

Pavlos