[ZDP] Zope Features list brainstorm

[Brian Hooper]

Hi everyone,

I have been working on making up a more up-to-date Features list for
Zope, since the one that is currently up on the Zope site is starting
to get rather out-of-date - I have so far come up with the below list.

The goal is to (as best as possible; Zope has *so many* features) list
up succinctly Zope's major features, in order to give people who are
wanting to know what Zope is all about a glimpse of the big picture.  

Is there anything major I'm missing here?  I'm looking forward to
hearing comments, suggestions, improvements!

--Brian Hooper

Zope Features

Now (current stable version)
----------------------------

Through the Web 
- management
- development
- maintenance; anywhere, anytime

Adaptable, tested architecture
- usable with many different databases, web servers
- wide and constantly evolving protocol support

Flexible, powerful user model
- allows site development to be distributed among different content providers

High performance
- way faster than regular CGI
- persistent server caches data to speed access to commonly requested data
- custom web server (ZServer) specially designed to serve out Zope

Tested and in use by major sites
- testimonials, case studies

Object-oriented web
- dynamic content bundles web content to the actions which manipulate it

Object development
- powerful built-in objects like Folders, Documents, SQL Methods
- DTML scripting builds powerful functionality into regular HTML
documents

Open Source
- written in Python, free and powerful language rapidly gaining popularity

Efficient development
- scripting language implementation speeds development
- object design encourages component reuse

Cost-performance
- free, with features that cost $1000's with other web application servers

Extensibility
- true extensibility, because of open source any aspect of
Zope can be customized to user needs
- Product API, External Methods allow the easy addition of functionality
- object-oriented, well thought out modular design also facilitates extension

Constantly evolving product
- newest sources always available for those wanting to be on the cutting edge
- features and improvements always being added, by the developers and also
  by other users

Active user community
- high volume mailing list
  get your answers from other users
- community documentation project

Technical support
- support available for the software from the experts that wrote it

Zope 2
------
Concurrency 
- multi-threading server, object database can further speed performance

Improved database
- Z ODB3 regeneralizes the API so that Zope objects can be stored anywhere

ZClasses
- through-the-web product development

New protocols
- webdav, ftp support