[Zope] Zope products, ZClasses, Database rows, XML or what?

[jmabbate]

Hi,

After having studied Zope for about a month (in my spare time) and
having read this list's messages during that time, I'm still
ambivalent as to what to use for a website I'm developing.

For example, several of the pages in the website will each be
dedicated to an individual author. Each page will feature a short
bio, a list of books authored, possibly a list of articles
authored, and links to interviews and other interesting web
sites/pages about or by the author. Each book in a list could
have information about when it was published, ISBN, any awards
received, links to reviews, links to one or more sources where
the book can be purchased, and other interesting details. In some
cases, the book could have a link to its own detailed page, within
the website. (No, it's NOT Amazon II ;-)

Prior to discovering Zope I had been working on implementing this
with PHP, possibly combined with a relational database such as
PostgreSQL and/or XML/XSL. With Zope, I have started working on
the rendering using Page Templates. However, I'm still undecided
as to what is the best way to handle all the data and content.

Some of the recent messages indicate that ZClasses are not the
way to go, that one should use Products, but the Zope Book
(Extending Zope) describes products as being implemented with
ZClasses or in Python (which I've been trying to learn too). The
book also briefly describes support for XML but there is no
mention of XSL, presumably because ZPT is the preferred
mechanism for rendering different views. And of course, there
is Gadfly and the relational DB adapters, which potentially
would allow storing most of it in, say, PostgreSQL, my original
preference, because this could hold lots and lots of data.

I've also taken a look and installed CMF, but it doesn't
appear to be a good match, since most of the content will not
be long text articles, but rather short classifiable information
about a given topic.

I realize there's no single answer and that each solution has
different costs, learning curve, future flexibility, etc.
associated with it. I hope that input and feedback from the
list will help in reaching a decision. Thanks in advance for
any comments and suggestions.

For reference, I've been using 2.5.1 on WinXP, but the target
will most likely run on Linux.

Joe