[Zope] Zope v OpenACS and nonprofit application developers

Joel Burton jburton@scw.org
Thu, 2 Aug 2001 14:49:47 -0400 (EDT)


On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Anders Schneiderman wrote:

> Just to add to Michael's post:
> 
> People who use openACS have raised two major concerns about using 
> Zope.  First, although Zope is easier when starting off, openACS comes a 
> much more developed, integrated system of modules out of the box, and so 
> althought it is more complex, the complexity pays off.  Given that our goal 
> is to build open source apps that work well for larger as well as smaller 
> organizations, this is an important consideration.
> 
> The much more serious issue is whether openACS scales much better than Zope 
> does.  People who use openACS say that its model can handle much larger 
> apps, due in large part to the fact that openACS is built on a very solid, 
> thoroughly tested data model that uses a relational database 
> approach.  Given that at least one of the participants, techrocks, needs a 
> platform that can handle tons of people, this is a pretty big issue.
> 
> So, as someone participating in the discussion over platforms, I'd be very 
> interested to hear from people who have used Zope to build large scale 
> applications.  In particular:
> 
> 1)  How large of an application have you been able to build with Zope 
> without seeing serious performance problems?  I.e., how many users, hits 
> per day/hour, etc.?
> 
> 2)  When you build a large-scale application in Zope, do you have to use a 
> RDMS on the back end?  Is there a point at which Zope's object system isn't 
> enough anymore?  The reason this is important to us is that there are lots 
> of advantages of using an object system, but if you need to rewrite the 
> backend into a relational database as the app gets larger, then openACS, 
> where the database is there at the beginning, starts to look like a better 
> deal.

We're a nonprofit using & teaching other nonprofits to use Zope.
There are some very large sites using Zope now (zope.org >> techrocks.org,
for instance), so I don't think that Zope isn't scalable per se.

We use a RDMS (PostgreSQL, which scales up *very nicely*), but that has as
much to do w/being able to get to our data via traditional database
front-ends as it has to do w/scalability).

OpenACS is a wonderful system; Zope is a wonderful system. Zope uses
Python (a lightweight, easy-to-use, increasingly-popular scripting
language and works great w/any database backend or no database
backend.) OpenACS, on the other hand, uses Tcl, a lightweight, less
intuitive, increasingly-less-popular scripting language (newer versions
use Java, a non-intuitive, lower-level real programming language w/a much
steeper learning curve). OpenACS requires PostgreSQL (tho' I understand
that Interbase support may be added in the future.)

[ take the point around languages seriously, IMHO. Compare a snippet of
  Python code to a snippet of Tcl code to a snippet of Java code. See
  which one makes sense to you. And regardless of what anyone tells 
  you about ACS or Zope, you _will_ have to do some programming if
  you want to _really_ customize & use these products. ]

[ also, keep in mind that ACS != OpenACS. With great respect to the
  OpenACS people (one or two who I know slightly from the PostgreSQL
  community, some of the 'massive-scalabilty' arguments made about
  ACS have to w/ACS (running on Oracle) rather than OpenACS (on PG).
  While PG itself scales nicely (there are huge installs out there,
  I don't know if there are proven huge installs of OpenACS. There
  might be; I don't know. ]

We knew both, and we chose Zope. (Of course, you don't have to simply do
as we do ;-) ), however, one of the strongest reasons we chose Zope was
hearing the endless complaints of a large local dotcom that uses ACS (&
this is with serious consulting w/ArsDigita!) about how messy,
complicated, and just-generally-painful ACS was to customize and use.
Zope, on the other hand, has been generally quite pleasant and the
community has been responsive.

If you're ever in the DC area, and want to see the underbelly of a
medium-sized nonprofit Zope site (www.scw.org), email me -- we'd be happy
to give you a tour.

Good luck in your decision, and hth,
-- 
Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington