[Zope] General information

webman webman <webman@beehive.de>
Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:46:37 +0200 (CEST)


hi tom,

> Yesterday, I've seen a demo of Lotus Notes, quiet impressive too. Most
> people have seen this demo too. So I should make a comparison between these
> two and also a little bit with other same alike applications.

if you must. they really are designed to do different things. zope as
far as i have seen has no built in workflow, calendaring, messaging, etc. 
features.

> I know Zope is Open Source and free. Offcourse this is a great benefit, but
> I need also some info on usage by experts on the web, usage by people who
> just want to put an article on the web (no experience however).
the open source part is a benefit any former lotus notes developer will
come to love. we used to do lotus notes development until we had the
people at IBM tell us that in order to accept our bugs reports we would
have to get a service contract with them. since lotus notes is far from
open source you are at the mercy of their release schedule when it comes
to thinks like bugs fixes --- and believe me lotus notes has lots of
project deadline endangering bugs! 

> 2. Why using Zope above the other?
>     Pro's & Con's of these applications and Zope.

biggest pro: you don't have to put up with lotus script! 

python is soooo much nicer to work with than lotus script. i'm sure 
some people will tell you don't worry about lotus script -- you can
program with C via the API but that may not be a fun road to travel.
(it wasn't for us). let me put it to you this way if anybody here
dares says: "zope sucks!" or "perl rules" i threaten him with a
new assignment involving lotus script .... ;-)

> 3. Looking at Lotus Notes, they don't need an external database. Can Zope's
> database be also used like the one in Lotus Notes? (ie. Storing records,
> etc..) How can this be done. Is this database capable of storing large data
> amounts? Huge pictures? 

the lotus notes database is not a relational database (neither is zope)
so if you want to do anything requiring a lot of data you should hook up
a DB via the ODBC interface. we have manipulating data in databases via
zope to be alot easier than it is with notes and lotus script.

> 4. If you need to make a knowledge base from start. Should we better use a
> database like Oracle, SyBase, PostgreSQL, ... or use the Zope database? 

yes!

> Other information is surely welcome, because I want to give a good
> presentation on this subject.

notes is such a complex monster that one work around follows another.
maybe their are other people on this list who found lotus notes developer
friendly but that was not our experience. i would imagine that a knowledge
base is a lot easier and faster to develop and program with zope and
python.

regards,

webman

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