[Zope-CMF] Development Philosophy & Architecture Questions

[Florent Guillaume]

> When should one create a tool as opposed to a portal content type?  Other
> than the obvious difference in the nomenclature one could write in code in a
> portal content type that should be placed into a tool instead; for instance
> version control for content types.  Should one create a new version
> controlled document(file) content type, or make a tool that performs version
> control on an existing type.

Tools are mainly used to provide component-based services and policies.
The main difference between having code in a content class and in a tool
is that the tool obeys to a well-define API, and is theoretically
replaceable without changing anything else in the site. So you can have
a catalog tool that does delayed indexing, a discussion tool that stores
discussions in an SQL database, a memberdata tool that stores member
data in LDAP, an registration tool that checks that a user has a correct
mail before adding it, etc.

That's the idea.

Florent

-- 
Florent Guillaume, Nuxeo (Paris, France)
+33 1 40 33 79 87  http://nuxeo.com  mailto:fg@nuxeo.com