[Zope] image meta

[Kai Vermehr]

We want to build a image database driven website.

Visitors will trigger searches resulting in pages that roughly resemble
Goggle's Image search results page:

    <http://images.google.com/images?q=cars>

As in Goggle a click on a thumbnail will lead to a page with a <single view>
of the picture (max 600 px wide). If the original still is bigger, there
might be a link to a full-size view.

The database will hold 8,000 - 10,000 pictures for a start, most of them
small gifs. Image types will mostly be GIF and JPEG.

Every image needs a <thumbnail>, a <single view> and a <full view>. Also
there should be all kinds of metadata (jobs we used it for, creator, date of
creation, keywords, description, notes, etc)

Now the ?'s:

If we chose to use the ZODB, how should the images with all their thumbnails
and metadata stored for fast access? What would be the best strategy? Create
some kind of object (folder) containing the thumbnails and metadata for each
single image? Or better separate the thumb's from the original image? Or
just dump everything into the same BTreeFolder?

And would ZODB be fast enough? Or are there better solutions if speed
matters? Lalo described they use PostgreSQL but if possible I'd like to keep
everything inside Zope (maybe place the bare image files in an external file
system).

Might it make sense to generate the thumbnails on the fly when requested? So
we only have the "original" files in the database (I guess not if speed we
need).

Is the property of a picture the right place to store the metadata? If so
I'm not really sure what to do if I create a new property called "client"
but the values could be many at the same time (Nike + Adidas + Puma) for a
single image ... how will this be handled?

thanks for any answers! 'K:?