[Zope] zodb queries, importing and exporting

[Cliff Williams]

LEAD UP:
I've got a site that I need to develop and it's a natural and obvious 
decision that I use zope and plone as they are what I'm familiar with 
and what I prefer to other CMS/Portal-wares out there. The site will 
have several counter parts around the globe being administered by 
various individuals, not all of whom are enlightened enough to realize 
the folly of using anything other than zope.

MEAT OF THE ISSUE:
The sites will be tracking dance clubs. We'll be building Types in plone 
(Using Archetypes) to track information about clubs locally. Each site 
will potentially have different database technology from the other 
sites. I know of 3 admins who are planning on using PHP-* + MySQL and a 
few others who want to use Postgress and some other front end.

We want to be able to integrate the information from any one site into 
any other site with respect to the "club objects" in the disparate 
databases. I'd like to leverage the simplicity of zope's 
application/database model and not use SQL storage if possible but don't 
know how I can be able to "share" with my counterparts who are bent on 
using relational databases.

We do not intend to leave open connections to each other's database 
servers. The consensus is to do scheduled dumps and push the files to 
the other admins who would have their own routines for integrating the 
data into their site. I really don't want to have to set up an SQL server.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

--Cliff