[Zope] Re: can I move my zope site off zope?

[Satheesh Babu]

About having all the data in ZODB, I tend to agree with Jacob Singh.  It 
is lot more *easier* in SQL (for people who know SQL a little bit) to 
extract data out in any way you want. However, I certainly don't agree 
that it is easier to program and maintain ASP/PHP code to talk to 
database for building a large scale applications - when compared to 
Zope.  IMO, Zope with ZSQL methods is the best and most versatile choice 
for hooking up a database to web. So, what I tend to do often is to 
design a database in RDBMS and use Zope to talk to it - this is a hell 
lot more easier than mixed HTML + ASP/PHP code - it cut down the 
development time by around 80% and certainly cut down lot of maintenance 
time.

One issue I can think of ZODB is that mass update of properties is 
little harder than SQL - I know there is find & replace support now, but 
I've not used it yet - as opposed to simple UPDATE table SET col='' 
WHERE blah blah.

That said, here is the principle that I've been following so far:
- If we need only a web application, go with Zope and its products
- If we need a web application and that data probably needs to be used 
elsewhere, create a SQL schema that supports Zope's products. Then 
automatically synch the ZODB data to RDBMS (well, this will limit the 
object capabilities of Zope a little bit)
- If it is really a mission critical application for which web is just 
one interface (and it is possible that people want OLTP capabilities 
later), start with a database design, use ZSQL, preferably make your own 
management interface and then create ZODB objects from the database. 
This is a lot like traditional ASP/PHP programming, but you would be 
surprised how easy it is in Zope. You might want to check the DBObjects 
product as well.


S Babu
http://vsbabu.org/