[Zope] Error on simultaneous updates/requests

[Dieter Maurer]

Sean wrote at 2004-1-2 17:01 -0500:
>I am working on an order entry system, and am getting a frequent error when
>multiple users are accessing the system.
>
>The error occurs most frequently when one user posts data which updates one
>or more folderish objects, and another user wants to get data at the same
>time as (or shortly after) the update. In most (all?) cases this is not the
>data that has been changed, or even data within the object that has been
>changed, but is data that must be found by acquisition, passing up a tree
>through one or more of the folderish objects that are being updated.
>
>The error message is "The object at XXX has an empty or missing docstring.
>Objects must have a docstring to be published", but has no obvious
>connection to a missing docstring - if the request is attempted again a few
>moments later, it works fine.

It is *very* unlikely that this error has anything to do with
concurrent access...

It is almost unbelievable that the problem disappears for the
same request...

I see only one (potential) explanation:

  * Python 2.1's "getattr" catches all exceptions (when called with
    an optional default argument) (while it should only catch
    "AttributeError"). This may transform "ConflictError"
    to "missing docstring".

    In this case, the affected object would define its
    docstring itself. This is very rare: usually, the
    docstring is defined by the class and not the object...

-- 
Dieter