[Zope] Personalization strategies. And just what does Broadvi sion do ?

[Paul Everitt]

Chas wrote:
> Just wondering if anyone has thought about personalization
> services based on Zope ? 

PTK.

> The most obvious/traditional approach seems to be :
> 1. Acquire user information (via 
> forms/surveys/transaction-histories etc)
>    and store in RDB. 
> 2. When the user comes to the site (and either logs in or is 
> identified 
>    by IP or cookie), query the RDB for customized content or 
> appropriate
>    products. 
> 
> OK, no magic there. But it's not very scalable in terms of :
> a) Load. We can keep shoving Zope servers on the front end
>    but the RDB is going to get hammered if this has to occur
>    for each and every request. 

This isn't necessarily true.  Zope caches objects, and the scenario you
describe is well suited to the caching strategy.  (That is, a user is
probably going to come back again within a minute of their previous
request.)

Compare this to an RDBMS strategy where state is always being retrieved
on each request.

> b) Development. A more object-oriented approach would be nicer.
>    eg. Personalities with behaviours and properties. 
>    Could a pool of persistent personalities be left floating 
>    around ? (No, this is not an early April's fool) 

The PTK membership model allows arbitrary extension of methods and
attributes.

--Paul