[ZWeb] ZCatalog Issues

[Michael Bernstein]

Here is a summary of a chat this morning on #zope-web where some 
long-existing ZCatalog issues were aired out. They are listed in 
dependency order:

1. It takes a *very* long time to view the indexes tab (this was 
something I thought Casey had fixed, but the problem seems to have 
re-emerged). This issue isn't actually blocking anything, it just makes 
it incredibly annoying and time consuming to deal with the Catalog at all.

2. Attempting to re-index the ZCatalog (by clicking the 'Update Catalog' 
button in the 'Advanced' tab) causes a timeout or an error message. 
There are over 179k objects, but it is my understanding that ZCatalog 
should scale to that many objects fairly easily. I am given to 
understand that Casey and Shane have been working on fixing this issue.

Possible workaround:
- Reindex the individual objects one at a time or in very small batches 
  by connecting to the ZODB with a ZEO client (suggested by Simon 
Michael and Andrew Sawyer).

3. Due to #2, it is as yet impractical to add new indexes to the 
ZCatalog in order to solve various issues with the site. For example, I 
added a title_or_id FieldIndex to the ZCatalog in early May to help 
solve a problem with the Product listings. As of now, this index is only 
aware of 6211 objects out of the 179k. These are only the objects that 
have been added or edited since I created the index. As a result, I 
can't solve the Products issue (though I have hidden it in the 
meantime). I have also been reluctant to tackle the HowTo listings until 
the ZCatalog problems are solved (or some reasonable facsimile thereof) 
for the same reason.

-- 
- Michael R. Bernstein  |  Author of Zope Bible
   michaelbernstein.com  |  & Zope.org Webmaster
      panhedron.com      |    PythonPhotos.org