[Zope] Web Solutions provider - using Zope ok?

[Chris McDonough]

> To move into enterprise market, I think a lot of
> effort is required to fight the 'J2EE hype'. Most of
> the companies now would like to hear 'J2EE-compliant'
> solutions being used by the vendor. They would like an
> 'open standard' that their future purchases can work
> with. A non-j2ee solutions provider would need to
> convince them otherwise (e.g. thru cost-benefit
> analysis)

I'm not sure much of this has been done formally.  There are a few
comparisons of Zope with other application servers "floating around"
on the Internet.  But the responsibility for a "polished"
buzzword-compliant cost-benefit analysis would probably fall to you
(as the vendor).

> Another requirement would be to provide Single Sign-on
>  portal feature to multiple applications, including
> external apps in other platform (Java, Perl, etc).
> There will be a need for APIs in the solution to
> allows external apps to call and authenticate with. Is
> this currently available in zope?

Yes.  Zope has an extensible user authentication, authorization, and
management API.  For examples of how this can be leveraged, see the
LDAPUserFolder and ExtUserFolder products.  External apps can
communicate with Zope through HTTP or XML-RPC for this purpose.

- C