[Zope] Request for Information

[Paul Winkler]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 08:19:03PM +0100, Shashin Shah wrote:
> 
> Dear Zope Users
> 
> Apologies if this is not the right forum to raise these questions.
> 
> I am helping a charity decide on an Open Source / Open Standards CMS
> and also a framework and supporting tools to help them develop their web
> based applications faster.
> 
> I would very much appreciate your views on the following:
> 
> - What is your view on Python versus Java. I am hearing that Python may 
> be more productive than Java in building web based apps.


I expect most people on this mailing list would agree.
A quote from my favorite presentation from Pycon DC 2004:
"Java sucks beyond all measure and comprehension" 
http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/1/presentation.pdf

 
> - Whilst Zope is open source, to what extent is it based on Open
> standards, If we select Zope/Plone/Python is there a danger of getting
> locked in to something that is proprietary.

Zope is a unique beast.  If you leverage one of its really nice
features - writing simple classes that store your data in the ZODB - 
then there is a small danger;  however, extracting the data is generally 
a matter of nearly trivial scripting, as long as you follow best 
practices and don't mix code into your content. CMF encourages this.

Zope plays nicely with various RDBMs, so if you are really worried
you could always go that route.

ANother thing that may help with portability:
write your core functionality without any Zope dependencies,
or maybe just ZODB dependencies.  Then write a layer
of wrapper classes that adapt your app to work with Zope.
This would help if you ever decide to migrate to another python
web framework, or Zope 3. 

BTW, "standards" such as J2EE don't necessarily buy you as much
portability as you would hope. 
I've seen a small group of java developers wrestle with
porting an app from BEA to Jboss.  It was planned to take a week
or two, and it took more like three months.
Given that we saved something like $200,000 in licensing costs,
that was deemed worthwhile. But still, what a pain.
 
-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com