[Zope] A few Zope advises...

[BZ]

I love taking a crack at these.. :)

At 6:45 PM +0200 5/23/02, Thierry Florac wrote:
>  - is there a "prefered" or "best working" operating system to run Zope
>servers ?? I may have to choose between a Debian GNU/Linux server (SMP
>on Intel) and a Solaris server (on Sparc). I've read here and there
>several messages talking about problems with Zope on Solaris, are they
>always true ??

No preferred or best working. Whatever is easiest for you to keep up 
and running. For me, that has always been Linux.

>  - as we also have a few applications to share, which can't be handled
>by Zope before several weeks, is there a best way to combine Zope and
>Apache ?? mod_proxy, mod_rewrite, pcgi, fastcgi, virtual hosts ??? What
>are the benefits and drawbacks of each of them ??

Again, no best way, just the way that helps you do what you want to 
do. For years I did not use Apache at all, but recently switched to 
mod_proxy (damn easy) for better logging (virtual hosts) and the use 
of mod_gzip. Virtual hosts is really for multiple sites out of one 
installation.

>  - as our needs are rather simple, and may just include customization
>and improvements to standard products, are there any benefits or
>drawbacks to write our new products as ZClasses, instead of full Python
>written products ?? Are the performances of each other equivalent ??

Quick and easy, probably ZClasses. Longer and complex go for Python.

>  - as we may quickly have a large amount of documents stored in our Zope
>database, is it a better practice to store everything into the ZODB, or
>to make Zope handle only metadatas and store real documents into
>external objects (by using products like ExternalFile, for example) ??
>I'm a little afraid when thinking of all my files stored in a single
>Zope database, and I think that storing documents externally may speed
>up several processes like incremental backups...

This is a very very common question. Sorry to repeat myself, but 
depends on what you are storing and what you are doing with those 
objects. If you want to store millions of JPGS and just want to have 
Zope serve them up, keep them on the filesystem. If you are storing 
documents that need lots of workflow, security, and will benefit from 
other ZODB things, keep it there. I have been storing everything for 
about 5 sites in one big ZODB. No problems so far and you only have 
to back it up (one file, rsync works well for this).

BZ