Philip leaves Arsdigita (was: Re: [Zope] kerberos ? + LDAP + ecommerce + ZEO replication etc)

[Albert Langer]

[Michael Bernstein]
Albert Langer wrote:
>
> Right now arsDigita is going through a major upheaval and it looks
> like OpenACS will provide an umbrella home for various ports of
> ACS 4, including python/Zope as well as their main orientation
> to Tcl. The data model of ACS4 is now much better separated from
> the Tcl side and they are doing a Query Dispatcher for supporting
> multiple RDBMS ports (with some tools in python for extracting
> SQL from the Tcl code completely ;-).
>
> http://developer.arsdigita.com/commerce-project-central/
>
>
http://www.arsdigita.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg%5fid=000b5M&topic%5fid
> =web%2fdb&topic=
>
>
http://www.arsdigita.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg%5fid=000ZGz&topic%5fid
> =web%2fdb&topic=

Wow. This is a shocker. I'm glad that Digital Creations
seems to have managed the process of creating and nuturing a
community around their product much better.

Another perspective on this can be found here:

http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$305

Michael Bernstein.

[Albert]
Sorry I buried the Arsdigita news among so many other things.

BTW among the other things, I just discovered that kerberos 5
kerberized sockets for python were done in December 1999, but have been
unable to locate any recent updates.

http://starship.python.net/crew/fdrake/manuals/
http://ftp.jussieu.fr/pub/python/contrib-09-Dec-1999/System/

Now back to the main story...

ACS4 SQL is even using a Domain Object Model pattern with properly
OO separation of a meta-data knowledge layer from operational
layer in the RDBMS, with an access control system acquiring
permissions from context, sophisticated Party/Group/Roles
relationships that can express the whole UML concept of
associations and based on accountability patterns
from Fowler's "Analysis Patterns", a powerful petri net based
workflow engine etc etc. Arsdigita has stopped Tcl development
and moved to java.

What more could a Zope guru want to persuade them to take a
look at the possibility of demonstrating how
much better that fits with Zope than with java or Tcl?

Oh yes - one more thing - an important Open Source community that
has RDBMS skills somewhat lacking in the Zope Community,
currently faced with upheavals in Arsdigita and actively working
on a demonstrably viable escape route from Oracle and
welcoming lots of new involvement.

Seems that isn't enough though. No sign of interest from DC.

Anybody listening?

See my original posting:
http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-March/086365.html

Plain fact is that Zope *still* lacks an industrial strength
RDBMS based ecommerce system that could have a huge impact
in getting Zope widely deployed at ISPs, which is critical
to getting lots more interest. Postgresql is now
*fully* "industrial strength" (outer joins, better
performance than Oracle and a python procedural language
much better than Oracle java or PL/SQL just released).

Right now when *lots* of people are getting involved in
OpenACS and are doing a port of ACS4 for *both* Oracle
and Postgresql 7.1 the opportunity is wide open for
getting real momentum behind adding the strengths of
the ACS RDBMS datamodel to the strengths of Zope. All
the SQL previously mixed in with Tcl cruft is just
sitting there waiting to be Zoped.

The reasons for deferring it earlier ("it would take
at least a week to study" and "got to resolve API
documentation first") cannot possibly still apply.

Everything else that could possibly be going well for
Zope is obviously going amazingly well, and will continue
to do so if somebody did spend a week or two on taking
a look. Yet this key aspect for getting wide deployment
is still being neglected.

I haven't been hassling anybody about this for nearly a
year, so I guess it's time for some CCing.

Sure hope somebody who can do something about it reads
the above link to previous posting concerning the
ACS4 developments - and the links within it and then
assigns some actual *resources*.

On the first anniversary of having first pointed out
that a viable ecommerce package would not happen
without DC involvement and without checking out ACS,
I go on the war path. That's not far off ;-)

You don't get turnkey ecommerce packages
without actual resources being put into a coordinated
effort. It's the coordination and serious interest
and commitment from DC that is lacking - there's no
lack of prototypes showing that Zope is a perfectly
suitable platform for the UI web side of ecommerce
as well as content management (when and only when
used together with an industrial strength RDBMS such
as postgresql - nobody in their right mind does
serious ecommerce without that). A project like
the CMF could get this done *fast*.

BTW another recent posting not responded to re
Zope SSL support is pretty relevant to this as well:

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-April/086937.html