[Zope] newbie...

[Maneesh Yadav]

Disclaimer: I think it took me a year to realize what Zope actually
is....maybe I still don't know :)

Sorry to bother you all, but the Zope environment is so rich with options
I'm not sure which path I should take.  I am doing a web page for my lab
and I have Zope up and running fine and I think I understand most of the
basics....now I need to make a web page that I'd like to do a couple of
things, keep a little profile of each person in the lab, have a little web
interface for POs (just a form with some fields that writes stuff to a
database so everyone can see what items have been ordered) and an overview
of research.  It's not really dynamic content, but I'd like to use Zope
for the ordering system and to ease design.

I was going to make a bunch of METAL macros but I *think*
it'd be smarter to store things like personell profile in a database and
have a web page that just prints out the contents and the same kinda
thing for lab POs (purchase orders)...

Would someone mind giving me a general layout for connectivity between
everything? I know
Zope has ZopeDB but it is unclear to me as to how to actually make data
entries and define a database...or do I have to make my database in
postgresql and connect to the database over zope?

So I know I should use metal for general site layout (nav bars and the
like), but how can I arrange my two underlying databases and what do I use
in Zope to connect to them and present the results of the SQL queries?
Would it be easy to have a tree like nav bar on the side (like Zope?),
what component does the 'tree' code fit under?
No need to xplain in too much detail, jbasically just what tool I need to
do what and I am sure I can follow one of the tutorials...

Many Thanks,
Maneesh




Thanks,
Maneesh