[Zope] Re: plone "vs." CMF was ... uPortal?? (fwd)

[Dario Lopez-Kästen]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Browning" <paul.browning@bristol.ac.uk>
To: "Dario Lopez-Kästen" <dario@ita.chalmers.se>
>
> Hi Dario:
>
> I should have copied you in too ...... how's the
> uPortal thinking going? Even if it's not positive
> then you might like to respond to this thread.
> I'd really like to see cross-fertilisation between
> uPortal and Zope ..... but if it's a non-starter then
> people should tell me!

[I am sending this to the Zope list as well]

Well, to begin with, I haven't studied much of uPortal yet, apart from
reading some of the specs and following the uPortal mailinglist. I am
scheduled to attend an uPortal advanced class in Stockholm, Sweden on
October 15-17 , and I expect to understand it more after that ;)

uPortal does have a strong line of followers among our fellow universities
in Sweden, and is, I believe, generally seen as a solid ground on which to
base current and future portal enterprises - and not only for each
university in isolation, but also in cooperative projects. There is an
informal group working whose goals is to share code and solutions among
universities, since we all share the same domain of problems, needs and
solutions.

Though I don't know if we (Chalmers University of Technology) hold an
official view of uPortal, there is an interest from both myself, my managers
and our CIO, and we view uPortal as a strategically important technology. If
we end up using it or not is still an open matter. We are, however, aware of
the possibilities.

In general, I am very appealed by uPortals idea of channels, which kind of
fits perfectly into that slot in my mind that gets all jumpy by the idea of
somehow being able to "assemble" software from a set of standard components,
making the result larger than the sum of it's components. For some reason,
uPortal resembles the kind of framework I thought Zope was when I decided to
use Zope for our apps, about 2 years ago.

We have invested a lot into Zope and the LMS application we have built which
, based on my (very) biased impression, is one of the most complete LMS's in
use in Sweden so far ;). We are not likely to drop Zope and replace it with
uPortal just yet; instead we will probably try to do what Paul Browning has
suggested, use Zope as a content driver/channel in uPortal.

I (reluctantly) agree that it doesn't really makes sense to re-implement
uPortal in Zope, since it is allready there ready to use and I find Paul's
insight on using Zope together with uPortal comforting since it allows for
good use of both worlds.

> >
> > What I'd like to see in the CMF/Plone kit is some uPortal-like
> > functionality. For example, once I, as regular joe-user, register with a
> > site, I'd like to be able to arrange my home page as I see fit.  Maybe
> > put the Calendar "channel" on my home page at the top-left in place of
> > the Merchandise "channel" ...
>
> Quite. I don't know much/enough about the CMF but I'm sure this
> is all do-able. But if uPortal have already invented that wheel ....
>

IMOH, this would be where I think it might make most sense to implement
uPortal-like functionality in Zope - not to have a "zuPortal", but to
improve either the way Zope works and/or how products are written, more like
components; however, this is a very personal opinion based on "gut feeling"
mostly, as I have not had the time to really grok Zope's code-base...

In any event I think that mixing Zope with uPortal might give us a
competitive edge that is hard to beat - many of the channels available for
uPortal are commercial ones, and I think it is reasonable to expect that a
decent OpenSource (or commercial for that matter) CMS channel in Java for
uPortal will take it's time to arrive. This is where Zope has it's window of
opportunity.

Also, let's not forget that for many small apps, setting up a Zope, buidling
the app and publishing it in uPortal is probably less painfull than doing it
entirely in Java. Anything that Zope provides OOB that allows you to focus
on the task at hand, you will have to build in Java before doing solving the
actual problem...

Sincerely,

/dario

- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Dario Lopez-Kästen, dario@ita.chalmers.se        IT Systems & Services
System Developer/System Administrator     Chalmers University of Tech.