[Zope] Newbie Questions - many-many relationships? Zope 2 or 3?

[Jim Vine]

Database Question


Hello,

I'm a newbie, so this is a newbie question!

I am currently preparing to build a web application
for property lettings, and I'm very interested in what
Zope has to offer. The application will need to
recognise a number of different objects, such as
"houses", "prospective tenants" and "property owners"
(the latter of which I may implement as user types,
which would allow these people to log in and amend
some of their own information.)

I'm very interested in the Object Oriented way of
doing things; for example, I'm thinking about
implementing houses as a folder-ish object, so it
would be able to contain photos of the house in
question. The biggest stumbling block I am facing is
how to do something "Relational" in an OO environment.
Specifically, I've been scratching my head for a while
about how to handle a many-many relationship: a
property owner may own more than one house;
conversely, a house may have more than one co-owner -
consequently it's not appropriate to have either
containing the other. I've googled for general
information about handling many-many relationships in
OO, and most of what I've come across has only
indicated that it can be tricky!

Having a look through past threads on this mailing
list I've noticed a few references to mxmRelations
(http://www.zope.org/Members/maxm/products/mxmRelations)
which seems to match up - have I got the right end of
the stick? Before I jump in with this I'd appreciate
any advice or guidance you could provide - it'd be
greatly appreciated.

While I’m on, I’ve noticed that Zope 3 has been
released. Is this now the recommended development
environment, or am I better off sticking with Zope 2
for now, and porting my application once Zope 3 is a
bit further down the line?

I’d greatly appreciate any guidance that can be
provided on these subjects.

Thanks in advance,
Jim



	
	
		
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