[Zope3-dev] Confusion re Site Management Objects

[Jeff Rush]

Just digging into Zope 3 after years with Zope 2, I'm having trouble 
understanding the concept of 'site-management folders'.  I've got both of the 
Zope 3 books here, but am finding that this area of Zope 3 (I'm running Zope 
3.1) has changed from the time of the book writings.

My objective is to play with PsycopgDA, but the usage docs that come with 
PsycopgDA refer to obsolete/missing Zope 3 stuff re how to create a 
connector.

Let me walk thru some of my confusion.

In the root folder I click on 'Manage Site', which takes me into some kind of 
special folder, presumably a site mgmt folder although the presence of a 
'Site Management' tab leads me to wonder if I'm not there yet.

What are the two folders here, named 'default' and 'tools'?  And why does the 
'Visit default folder' link take me to the same place as clicking on the 
'default' folder itself?  One of the books say 'Tools folder let you manage 
tools.' ;-)

It's not clear whether to create my DB connector under 'default' or 'tools' so 
I guessed and picked 'default'.

A key part I'm confused about is that when creating the connector, I gave it a 
name like 'dbfinance', but later I need to register it, giving it another 
name.  Why two names, and when is the first name ever used?  The second name 
(registration name) is what appears in the drop-down 'Known Connectors' 
vocabulary.  I guess I don't understand utility registration.  I'm used to 
the Zope 2 approach of dropping DB connectors in the acquisition path.

After registration, I can use the connector, but I'm puzzled re access 
permissions.  If my connector permissions is 'zope.public', for general SQL 
access throughout the site architecture, does that mean there is a way for 
anonymous website visitors to invoke arbitrary SQL operations?  Does Zope 3 
support the Zope 2 idea of priviledged proxies, where an intermediate has 
more privilege than the user visiting the site?

One of very useful features of Zope 2 was balloon text that popped up when you 
hovered over component icons within the ZMI, which told you the type of 
component.  Adding that would help disambiguate the various types of folders, 
most of which have the same icon.

Also interesting, reported as bug #494, is that you can't ever remove 
registered utilities via the ZMI, even when they are deactivated.  You get a 
msg about needing to deactivate them first. ;-)

-Jeff