[Zope] Bypass ZODB and use File System

[Michael Bernstein]

Noah wrote:
>
> What we really want to do is to provide a second view to
> /var/www/htdocs for Apache. I understand that Apache won't
> serve up our dynamic content, but that's not important.
> Zope is just viewed as a better solution for managing our
> static documents. The problem we have in my organization is
> that there is a lot of resistance to my prototype Zope
> document management system due to the fact that everything is
> stored in ZODB. We think this risky -- possibly a data prison.

The way my organization does it, is to manage the content
within Zope, and to regularly run 'wget' on the server to
replicate it all to static files, which are then served by
Apache on another server. Doing that, plus regular backups
of the Data.fs file (you're already making regular backups
of your Apache based system, right?), and you should be
guarded against any but the most catastrophicly unlikely
disaster scenarios (you do have a disaster recovery plan,
right?).

wget is really a very easy way to get documents back out of
Zope, and if your system is designed to do this as a matter
of course (perhaps by using 'cron'), it should silence those
particular criticisms.

> Also people don't want to change from their current habits of
> editing files via NFS or Samba mounted directories. My original
> plan was to allow them some sort of syncronization process,
> but now I think that would be crazy.

Hmm. I guess it depends on what percentage of your users
want to keep doing this. You can certainly combine LocalFS
with the approach that I outlined above. I would make it a
special case. Keep the CMS server separate from the Apache
server, and only allow the mounted directories on the CMS
server. I've found that people appreciate being able to
manage their content from anywhere through a browser, and
they tend to gravitate toward that as a matter of course,
once it's there, if they're not forced to do it.

In short, give people options, and see which ones they
actually use.

HTH,

Michael Bernstein.