[Zope] Abstract for zope seminar at Internal web conference

[Jay, Dylan]

Lucent being the megolith company that it is, has its own internal
conference for web stuff. I'm submitting an anbstract for a seminar that I
hope is accepted. It is on the work I have done using zope over the last few
months. I thought I might send it for you all to get your feedback. Any help
you may have would be appreciated. I have to submitt the abstract in about
12 hours or so.
"Using the Open Source Z Object Publishing Environment to build a
maintainable, data driven customer web site"

These days when building a web site there are many tools at your disposal.
Recent years have seen the growth of a vast array of solutions for providing
services such as database integration, dynamic content, collaborative
editing and user tracking. Solutions range from traditional CGI, server-side
scripting to large-scale Web Application Servers such as Netscape
Application Server. 
Our group produces a software product called "ProVision". We needed an
Intranet web site through which we could sell, distribute, and support this
product to the Lucent provisioning community
(http://provision.auslabs.lucent.com). We choose the Z Object Publishing
Environment (also know as ZOPE, see http://www.zope.org) with which to build
the ProVision web site. 
We found the main advantages of ZOPE are:
*	Its own OODBMS gives the entire web site transactions, versioning
and an integrated security model. 
*	A unique method for reference resolution called "Acquisition" means
that scripts and documents can be separated in a flexible and maintainable
fashion. 
*	SQL database integration provides connection management, seamless
transaction integration and an easy scripting syntax.
*	That it is built on top of the OO language Python making code both
powerful and cross-platform.
*	An extensible architecture called "Products" that makes it easy to
install new functionality and package code for reuse. Products exist for
IMAP, LDAP, Web Discussion board, E-Commerse, news and calender rendering
amoung others. 
*	The entire site is maintained and edited entirely over the web.
*	The fact that ZOPE is open source meant that not only did it lower
the costs associated with our site, but also it ensured a high level of
support from a large worldwide development community. 
With these tools at our disposal it was possible to create a sophisticated
but maintainable web site in about 300 developer hours. The web site now has
over 1000 registered users spread over 20 countries. In this seminar we will
talk about features of the ProVision site such as a site map that is
automatically updated, a registration system with email confirmation and
post intergration, and pages with dynamic content based on a user's profile.
We will discuss how they were implemented using ZOPE and how ZOPE can bring
to your web sites.