What's ZOPE anyway?

[Christopher Petrilli]

Jayr Magave <jmagave at amazon.com.br> wrote:
> I went through www.zope.org and read everything I could, and found the
> following definition:

> "Zope is an Open Source application server and portal toolkit used for
> building high-performance, dynamic Web sites. "

> ... and the rest of the page goes on to describe ZOPE.

Unfortunately today, it's very difficult to avoid "hype" and just describe
what something is.  An "application server" is a foundation for building
an application.  In the case of Zope, this includes:

	* Full concurrent object database with undo and versions
	* templating language
	* URL -> Object conversion
	* Management environment

Some people have compared it to Cold Fusion, but the reality is that Cold
Fusion is a much more limited conceptual model.  The only real competitor
from an architecture perspective is Apple's Web Objects.   JUnfortunately,
a 30 word snippet doesn't provide any indication of the power.  I have
taught 3 day classes only as an "introduction" to the concepts, hardly
expert. There's just that much there.

Chris
-- 
| Christopher Petrilli                      ``Television is bubble-gum for
| petrilli at amber.org                          the mind.''-Frank Lloyd Wright