[Zope3-dev] RE: [Zope-dev] Reflections on the Zope 2 to Zope 3 transition

[Joachim Werner]

Zitiere Jean-Francois.Doyon at CCRS.NRCan.gc.ca: 
 
> Unlike some others it seems, I look at Zope almost uniquely as 
> "framework" for 
> building web applications. An API or SDK if you will.  As such, I think 
> it's internal software desing and architecture has to be priority number 
> one. Otherwise anything you layer on top of it is doomed from the start. 
> To those people that just want an application server that works, such 
> as CPS or Plone, this should still be a very good thing. Having a much 
> higher quality base will mean better end-user usable products in the 
> long run ... 
 
Well, the question is if we get the better API/SDK if we just start from 
scratch and think about it or if we try to build a real application (or 
better: two different ones using the same framework) and then refactor the 
parts that get too specific to the application ... 
 
The other issue I see with the "SDK" idea is defining what the building blocks 
should be. I personally think that the building blocks of a web application 
can be rather large and that most people reinvent the wheel over and over 
again. We need a good component architecture, which was missing in Zope 2 
(and, IMO, implemented poorly in CMF), but the components can be rather large. 
 
My guess is that if you have all the components to build a personalized web 
content management system and a web-based groupware system (+ maybe document 
management stuff) you'll end up with all the parts you'll need to build 80% or 
more of all corporate or organizational web apps. The rest is plumbing 
together external data sources and defining workflows ... 
 
Currently lots of these large building blocks and the tools to make them easy 
to use are still missing in Zope 3 (which is not meant as a criticism). 
 
One last remark: What has irritated me a bit when I read the latest version of 
the Zope 3 tutorial today is that all the examples are about a rather simple 
web-based application. Zope 3 still seems to be very focussed on being a 
web-based thing rather than a Python-based application framework. But to do 
this really well we need much more comfortable tools and components, e.g. I'd 
not want to have to write most of my HTML templates by hand and have to take 
care of all the REQUEST-RESPONSE internals. I'd like to focus on the 
workflows, the data structures, and the use cases of the application, not on 
HTML, sessions, etc. 
 
Cheers 
 
Joachim