[Zope] zope anywhere near aol server?

[Chris McDonough]

> Scenario:  Let's say you've got an application that
> uses aol server and the razor extensions to it.  Most
> of the code is done with TCL, some C.  The app is
> fairly dynamic and is setup in a clustered environment
> behind a cisco content switch.
>
> Is there anyway to improve on, or match, the
> performance of a system like this but substituting
> Zope for aol server?

It's possible.. the largest Zope site that I know of serves 1+ million page
views per day using ZEO.

Here's some benchmarks comparing Zope against Tomcat:

http://www.zope.org/Members/BwanaZulia/benchmarks.html

There are some other (possibly incorrect) benchmarks that compared AOLServer
vs. Zope vs. Apache on the weblog Qube Corner, but it's down now and I can't
find a cached copy.

> Do you think putting squid (or apache, or aol) in
> front of Zope would bring it closer to this setup, or
> would this be more of a hassle than it's worth in a
> clustered environment?

Yes, I think it would be worth it... caches are handy!  ;-)  Zope has a
caching engine built in to it that can either cache pages in server RAM or
which can set headers on pages served out of Zope which tell downstream
caches to serve cached pages for a specified amount of time.

> What about mod_backhand?  Could this be used in anyway
> to help improve zope's performance?

I have no idea what that is, sorry!

> Has anyone thought of dropping medusa and trying to
> integrate zope into a web server like aol/apache?

Titus Brown (of PyWX fame) has expressed an interest in doing this, and I
think we'd be happy to help once the world stops spinninig so fast. ;-)