[Zope] ZODB or xySQL?

[Ragnar Beer]

>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)

Actually I'm not planning anything except to be prepared. I'm only 
starting and have no idea what I will end up with. So of course I am 
looking for a scalable solution. From what I've learned from the list 
scalability seems to be a weak spot of Zope (while e.g. the latest 
Enhydra includes a failover solution). I have no idea how much ZEO 
costs. (People from DC could you help here? I couldn't find a price 
on the website.)

I tried to understand ZClasses and read the documentation a couple of 
times but it didn't help a lot. So now I'm using Python classes which 
is very easy (maybe only because it's better documented). Can you 
e.g. simply add a dictionary or a list of dictionaries to a ZClass 
and access each element individually?

Would be nice if I could get back to you some time later to talk 
about the PCA. :)

Ragnar