Zope Learning Curve (was Re: Zope question: collaborative environments? )

[Cary O'Brien]

In article <39F8C8EC.EB2DC75D at UTS.Itron.com>,
Tom Bryan  <TBryan at UTS.Itron.com> wrote:
>I plan to search more in the Zope archives and maybe discuss this question 
>on one of their myriad of mailing lists or discussion boards, but I was 
>hoping that someone might have a quick answer.
>
>I'm a developer, and I'd like to create a combination discussion board, 
>bug tracking system, and general collaborative environment.  I was 
>thinking of using Zope, but I have never even looked at Zope.  Am I crazy 
>even to consider using Zope when we won't have any dedicated staff to 
>develop stuff for/in Zope and maintain it?  Is Zope easy enough to use, 
>simple enough to maintain, and complete enough as a product that I could 
>get something set up with just a couple of weeks of work and then simply 
>use it?
>

We are using Zope in-house for that exact purpose.  We use it for
bug tracking and we have a couple of internal discussion boards. Next
step is a revision control system for the config files used by
our system.

We use a combination of in-house built things and zope products.  The
bug-tracking system is custom, talking to PostgreSQL database.  I fixed
ZDiscussions[a] to work with the latest Zope for discussion boards.

Without being too redundant and repeating things already in this thread,
there some things you should know about zope.


0) Zope has a sigmoidal  (_/-) learning curve.  It is easy to get
   it up and running out of the box, set up a couple of static pages,
   set up common header/footers, and run a couple of simple queries
   from a database.   Then you try to do just a bit more and you have
   to deal with aquisition, dtml [b], the REQUEST object, ZClasses, and who knows
   what else all at once.  Things that are simple turn out to be complicated.
   In the end, however, if you stick with it and get a handle on everything
   you can do things pretty quickly.

1) Jerry's(?) comment about Zope Addiction is right on the mark.  The
   system is so powerful and subtle that you end up spending a *lot* of
   time figuring out how to be clever.  It is very addictive.

2) The documentation is getting better.  There is a book coming out that is
   available (draft)  on-line.  The mailing list (zope at zope.org) is pretty
   good (and very high volume).

So what should you do?  I like to have main and backup plans for stuff. I'd
first look for PHP packages that would kinda-sorta do what you want.  Make
sure they are current, and then give Zope a shot.  Prepared to be frustrated,
and prepare to bail and do things with PHP if 1/2 of the time is over and
you still haven't made much headway.

Or as plan C, if you are comfortable with SQL, HTML, and Python, use something
like mod_apache or webware (webware.sourceforge.net).  But you will be re-implementing
stuff that is already in Zope.  

Have fun!

-- cary

[a] I had to fix it to work with Zope 2.2.  A lot of stuff is like that.
[b] Not really as bad as people say.  I kind of like it.


>Any advice before I waste a lot of time digging into this topic would be 
>much appreciated.  (The time frame is very tight.  My boss is planning to 
>lend me one of his personal machines to play put on my network at home as 
>a zope or sourceforge or ??? server so that I can evaluate it next week.
>He definitely wants something in place in the next few weeks.)
>

This might be a bit tight.

>---Tom