[Zope] Re: Advice needed before settling on Zope

[Maik Ihde]

Hi David,

> We have to build a content/document management system for our company, and I
have been assigned to look into this and make a start.  The system has quite a
few requirements, which I'll outline below.

As you might already know, there are quite a few CMS built on top of Zope2.
Zope3 seems to be getting more and more momentum as people find out that it's
concepts and ideas are really superior.

> Version Control: we need quite complex version control.  Lets say we have
document x.  This document will be developed and worked on by multiple users. 
At the same time, this will also be translated into other languages.  If a
change is made to the English version, then that change will have to be made in
other languages too.  I think that in Version Control speak, the different
languages can be thought of as different renditions.

Version control is already used in various Zope-Products (CPS for example). So
you need to keep track on multilingual Content here. The translations are to be
done by human beings, though? Do you just want to create a new version in a
certain workflow-state for the other language-versions when a new english
version occurs?

> Workflow Control: because of the number of people involved, we need to have a 

Well, Workflows are there. In Zope2 Land You have DCWorkflow, some OpenFlow
Variant and also AlphaFlow on the Plone Side. In Zope3 there is also a Workflow
Package, so I think the Infrastructure is there too.

> Document Management - the system is all about documents.  They would like the
ability to organise the documents into different pages for people to download. 
They should be able to download older versions or different renditions.  Also
each document will be available only to certain groups or roles.

No Problems here as well, especially the security model of both Zope2 and Zope3
is really well suited for such Applications.

> Our client is quite specific about what they require and how they want it to
be presented, so ease of customisation and extensibility is a major factor.  We
have looked around at existing CMSes but have not found one that fulfills all of
our requirements or that is customisable enough that we can fulfill our
requirements with a bit of work.  We looked at Plone, and then I decided we
might be better off going down a level and building on Zope.

Then definetely you are right in betting on Zope. I would even say, that it
sounds like you should choose Zope3 - however this is hard to say, since your
requirements are not very specific. But if customisation and extensibility are
important then it sounds like Zope3 to me.

>settle on Zope, would we be wiser using the 2.x version or the 3.x version?  I
>imagine that 2.x has more documentation and more addons (e.g. for versioning,
>workflow etc.).

Yes, but Zope2 is a complex Beast which has to carry a lot of historical
weirdnesses around. Zope3 has a much better structure but there are not so many
Addons available yet. 

I would advise that you have a look at the zope3 Malinglist and try to find out
if the already existing Component Infrastructure roughly suits your needs. I
mean Database Connectivity, LDAP and that stuff. 

Kind Regards
Maik