[Zope] Planning a zope application: maximum size, performance issues

[Scott Wilson]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a recruitment processing system that aims to
handle both applicant submissions and the management of the process by
HR staff. The intention is to use a ZOPE-only solution with Zserver,
ZODB (no external DB), Zclasses, and we have a successful prototype
running (yay!).

An important issue for us is how many applicants a single ZOPE server
instance can handle, and what the total number of applications that a
single instance can store, without suffering severe performance
impairment or instability. 

This is important for doing forward planning (i.e. how long before the
need to buy another server, split up the recruitment campaigns onto
separate ZOPE instances etc.) 

I know its not a simple issue - there are considerations of how large an
individual item is, how much processing an application requires once its
submitted to the system (quite a bit) and how its all coded (mostly
Python scripts called as methods on ZClass isntances) etc. But that
said, are there any metrics that can be used to get some ball-park
figures?

Thanks!

=============
Scott Wilson
Technical Journalist
Centre For Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS)
+44 (0)1248 383645
http://www.cetis.ac.uk