[ZDP] Zope docs impressions

Martijn Pieters mj@antraciet.nl
Tue, 11 May 1999 12:47:30 +0200


At 00:35 11/05/99 , Rik Hoekstra wrote:
>About the history of the web - I liked the cgi part. What I missed
>was a short word the various efforts there have been to mix HTML and
>code: Server Side Includes, PHP (which I do know nothing about) and
>ASP. Explain why they came into existence (server side code, without
>really programming) and what their problems are:
>- maintenance by full mixing of code and HTML
>- security???
>- extensibility??? (just guessing)
>Zope solves many of these problems, because it separates the many
>tasks involved in creating and maintaining a website:
>- providing and updating data, structured (SQL) and unstructured
>(text and HTML)
>- programming databases (by using SQL, and possibly other
>protocols)
>- programming scripts to perform tasks the webserver can't do by
>itself.
>- visual design of the website
>
>Ideally these various parts are carried out by persons with different
>abilities - so that you don't end up with a website which is just
>designed by a programmer, or (perhaps even worse) a website which is
>structured by a designer. [link to Z management guide]

Don´t forget the ímportance of the ´through/the/web´access to Zope. With 
ZClasses, you can build incredibly powerful applications with only a 
browser. The latest CVS version lets you subclass UserFolder, Folder, 
Image, File, DTML Document, and DTML Method classes as well as a basic 
ObjectManager class. This means you can expand on the basic building blocks 
of Zope. If you want to be able to add a photograph of a user to it´s user 
object, just subclass the UserFolder and User classes, and mix in an Image 
class, and presto, you have a User object that can contain an image as 
well. Or mix in an ObjectManager class, and you can add arbitrary objects 
to you user object, including DTML documents and images.

Try and do that through the web in ASP.

--
Martijn Pieters, Web Developer
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